Let's Help Each Other
Putting the 'Community' in ThaoForTheRecord.Community. I didn't buy that domain name for nothin'!
Friends!
Thanks so much to those who sent in tips and shared what helps you stick to some kind of daily structure. As I was reveling in your generous and genuine correspondence and offers of support, I was reminded that the internet is not just for breaking us.
I think we could use For the Record to be a resource for each other via the Comments section. My vision is that every once in a while I’ll post things helping me get through the day/ life/ a particular moment and I hope you‘ll be up for sharing as well. I believe it would be so sweet and community-oriented and sometimes hilarious. I myself have a horrid association with the Comments section of any online platform so I’m hoping we can all take part in what my partner calls an Ongoing Emotionally Corrective Experience. And because Fridays are casual and I do what I want everyday, today is the launch of “Let’s Help Each Other” and the weekly Q and A is gently postponed.
Ok here’s the first one:
You know when you’re at your desk and out of the blue you remember a particularly galling moment in life when someone was being a complete asshole to you and you didn’t have the right response/instantaneous vengence tactic at the ready and here you are years later trying to work on a remix but you cannot think about music, music is nothing, nothing is anything, you only know the absence between your heartbeats, the narrowing of your vision, the heat in your ears and the deep reverberations from within that whisper : I am ready now. I must find them…
?
What helps me:
I saw this sweet manatee in this snug, sassy t-shirt in an insurance commercial YEARS ago and whenever the blood boils too hot I conjure this image tonic in my mind’s eye. Come At Me Bro Manatee makes me chortle, calms, and defuses me so that I can continue to work, but also reminds me that staying cool does not mean being weak. I just looked up the commercial and then took a screen shot of the still. Is this how memes start? Was this a meme first and then it took live-action commercial form? “Let’s Help Each Other” posts can also contain cultural trivia.
Alright, your turn if you want! The Comments section is open and operators are standing by. Thank you for being a part of this community.
yours,
t
I've read all your comments twice over, and all I can think is that I very rarely find that kind of peace in my mind. Solitude is my enemy, aloneness is a disease I have no cure for, yet even when surrounded by crowds of people solitude and aloneness is all I can feel. My therapist has helped me to try and find touchstones that can bring me out of my mind so I can try to find something that will bring me the kind of peace you all describe. They're all good things, things I care about and enjoy, and they bring me no more than a fleeting glimpse of hope. I tried very hard to come up with a scenario, a place, a song, a moving freight train, something that would be helpful to others who read this. I started and abandoned a dozen other comments, and I always came back to this. I'm sorry, this is not the sort of thing you were hoping to hear when you posed this question, Thao. But it's really all I have. Perhaps if I read all of your comments a few more times I might find something that might help me. Perhaps I'll never find anything at all. Again, I'm sorry, this will likely only bring people down or upset them, but it's all I've got. All these things are things I could never say out loud to another person, except my therapist who is a patient, kind and caring man. You kind, caring, generous people are the only other ones who know. Thanks for reading this, and I'm sorry.
There is a creek that borders the property where I work and if the weather is good I’ll take a break and sit down there listening to the frogs.