Private yet Public

In La Strada on Sunday, talking to Crysse about some of the conflicts and difficulties of this whole venture, she gave me sound advice (as always), 'You're a writer, Haz - you can write your way through this.'

She's right.
A large part of what writing is for me is that making sense of 'from there to here', and facing 'from here to there'.

My own, private journals strive towards revelation and illumination, telling and re-telling myself the stories of my life, past and present, divining their meaning for me. Working out where I am, where I need to go next.

However, I have pledged to write this blog, so that those of my friends and supporters can keep up to date with how it's all going for me. That involves a high level of honest self-disclosure. But there are other tricky issues, because I'm not in isolation - particularly not at the moment, having asked for support, and being given so much... Just keeping that energy going involves a lot of social interaction - which I'm not used to, and I find it easily unsettles me.

Walking the field circuit the other morning before work, it struck me that writing this blog is like being naked in a communal shower.

But if I'm not careful, and confuse my own private journal process with the blog, that will be like being naked in a communal shower - but with all my orifices beginning to leak.

Some of my inner processes will be plain boring, others too painful, others terrifyingly self-revealing. I have to be careful how I write about and represent other people - particularly when they've unsettled me and I need to write back to my core.

Already, I've posted much that is, in retrospect, too banal to be boring people with.

This is not really a 'heppie trekkie journal', because it's for public consumption - which is not a creature I'm familiar with, although I do a lot of writing with others that I'm happy to share.

I've written a great deal this week that I can't share.

What I can say is that I can't always ask for help when I'm down. Once I've begun the climb up myself, I can. Insensitive help risks me falling off the edge... Which is why it's so tricky to ask - if I ask the wrong person, things get worse rather than better!

This week has led me to examine minutely my motives for doing this.

Of course it's about awareness and combating discrimination - putting my money where my mouth is, given my job - but there's a great deal more involved than that for me. That's the - rather uncomfortable - add-on.

It's about physical endurance and challenge. If I can get to the top of the world, maybe I'll feel brave enough to do treatment. Courage is contagious - and Jeff is tough. He knows about hep c, he knows about treatment - and he knows about mountains. I couldn't be in safer or more inspirational hands.

I'm an extremist, and I'm cyclic. I have to learn to harness that for my training.
Somebody said to me 'Yes, but you're grown-up now. You have to do it differently.'

But they're wrong. Trying to change my inner nature, go against my natural cycles, is where failure lies. You can't tell a dolphin it should be a pony to survive.

It's about learning how to harness my natural inclinations to make them work positively for me.

For example, I woke this morning feeling grim. (As if I'd had about three bottles of wine - you know, that sick, toxic, poisoned feeling we call 'hangover'? - which it wasn't, I had a glass of wine last night. One glass does not a hangover make - and I'd have felt the same this morning if I'd been abstinent last night, it's been such a full-on week). Getting immersed in writing, I forget how crap I feel.

So maybe it's just about creating the relevant distractions!