The unhealthiest way to deal with life is to not deal with it

​While reading this article I wrote three years ago today, I had to reflect and ask myself, am I still dealing with life? Am I still dodging the temptation to pretend there's nothing in my life to deal with?

The answer is yes.

I most certainly am.

From June 8, 2021.

***

I had a good friend reach out to me yesterday. He said, "Seems like you’ve been having a rough go of it lately. How are you dealing? I’ve often wondered if using your incredible writing skills to open your guts to the world is more curse than blessing."

I don't think he'll mind me answering that question here. Because I think there are probably times others have wondered that as well.

I'd answer that by saying, I AM dealing. And that's a good thing.

I've spent so much of my life NOT dealing, NOT facing, NOT tackling. So the fact that someone asks "how are you dealing" and I can answer that I am, I AM indeed dealing, that's a good thing.

Actually, that's a miraculously great thing.

The reality is, life is hard. Yours is and mine is. I've spent a lot of my life hiding from that fact. One way to deal with the fact that life is hard is to NOT deal with it.

Don't talk about it.

Don't wrestle with it.

Just pretend.

By not dealing with things we allow ourselves to pretend the hard things in life are going to go away. If we simply wait long enough, surely they'll disappear.

Then you wake up a couple of decades later and the hard things are still there. Beating on your door and screaming for you to come out. The waiting game is over. You've exhausted all the ways of pretending the challenges in life are simply going to go away.

So I write. And I no longer write about a life I pretend I have. I write about the life I have.

And what I'm discovering, writing 'I'm sad' beats the hell out of pretending I'm not sad.

Writing about loneliness beats the hell out of pretending I'm not lonely.

Writing about frustration and anger and confusion and desperation and a thousand other emotions I've trained myself to pretend I don't have, well, writing beats pretending every single morning.

So, I'll say to you, the time to worry about how I'm dealing is when you see me no longer dealing. That's when I was at my lowest. That's when I most frequently found myself in dark places.

When I wasn't dealing.

Life is hard, but every morning when I step away from this keyboard, I feel hope. And the beauty of it is, so many of you have reached out at different times after I've stepped away and said you feel hope too.

So I get where my buddy is coming from. I do. In a way, my writing gift IS a curse.

Writing has taken me on a tour, somewhat forced, of a lot of stuff I've pretended away. Many days it's like my pen takes hold of me and makes me write 'the waiting is over' a thousand times on the chalkboard.

The waiting is over. The waiting is over. The waiting is over....

No more waiting for emotions to disappear that absolutely need to appear. And be dealt with.

Maybe writing is a curse. But I know this. I know this more than I've ever known it.

The curse is the cure. The curse is the cure because the waiting is indeed over.