Born By The Wires

oh for sure… I’m really excited to hear what kind of madness early HP was. Plus, what an ILL cover!

Dearest Rachel,

This is a tough one, but I’ll do my best. This is tough because people are their own individuals, and everyone has their own way to skin the cat.

In my destructive days, I used to go out behind the record shop and hurl/thrash cardboard boxes into the dumpster. It’s “Gummo”-ish, but it was helpful to just take the anger/aggression out on these inanimate objects that had zero bearing on your life. Plus, they needed to be broken down and so it was considered a productive task.

In my destructive days, I’d get drunk and then cry… that does nothing. That happens sometimes now, and the realization that that did nothing is even harder because I’m 35, and I’m not 22 and getting drunk, crying, smoking, all while wearing headphones, blasting Geraldine Fibbers and pretending you were Carla Bozulich just doesn’t cut it anymore.

So now…oof, NOW i do a couple things. Sometimes I write…I write it all out. Vomit it all out and then re examine every single thing that’s got me angry, sad, and fearful and then emotionally cut n paste WHY these things are the things that create these feelings until it is as close to logical as possible.  Failing that, I’ll ride my bike and just get into the rhythm of that, which is helpful in parsing out why this shit is so heavy and what can or cannot be done with it. Failing that, I get acupuncture which for 30-60 minutes can just be the perfect thing/trip to la-la-land/big old reset button that can sort all of it out.

However, I’m a floppy emotional mess, and I can’t help but try to figure it out in the process because I avoided that kind of work for years and it lead to unhealthy behavior. So that’s my thing. It sucks and it’s hard, but it helps.

The only time I could become a robot was when my mom died, which happened while I was going through a nasty break-up. That was just too heavy and I became a robot because I had no idea how I could exist in a work-environment otherwise.

hope this helps.

love,
Stephen

Can’t hurt, right? If it’s a solid pairing, y’all get along and the vibe is “we should do this more often” then yes, call/text/whatever.

BUT, if you don’t get a response, try not to get bummed out about it. Just go about with your free day, and goof off in the summer. The worst attitude to have is entitlement to someone’s time (you’re a smart, sensitive person so I think you’re well aware of this) so if it happens, great. If not… whatever, you got other shit going on.

It’s where he stores all his care for the troubled kids. Actually he stores all of that in one eyebrow. The other one stores all of his memories of “GROWING UP IN THE BRONX” because THANK YOU SANDY, OH DID YOU GROW UP IN THE BRONX?????