Big Ol' Log

I used a foam roller yesterday. It's like a big Styrofoam log that you roll on.

And the first thing I did was lay my back over it

and then I heard a loud popping sound, I couldn't breathe, and I made a sound like an eighty-year-old prostitute sucking raisins off the back of a horse through a bendy straw.

(that's not really what it sounded like I just liked the image. Also, she's from Estonia.)

Then I curled up in the fetal position and simultaneously cried/laughed for a good thirty seconds.

But afterwards! I could breathe so much easier. It was like I'd had this big, balled-up, writhing, festering, sack of partially-melted plastic babies grafted onto my back and someone had swooped up from behind me and torn it off.

The way I was breathing was like that time I took steroids for a cough and it opened up my lungs too well and all I could do was breathe and laugh hysterically.

So anyway, I think the point is that sometimes painful things can be really good for you.

Like, a giant log of foam roller is like well-deserved humiliation. And for that reason we should learn to embrace humiliation.

I know that I walk around most of the time thinking, consciously or sub-consciously, "I'm not a jerk! I'm not a jerk! I'm not a jerkwad. I'm special and special and special and special and special!"

And it's not necessarily bad to think that, but I think sometimes it can become too restrictive. You're afraid to do anything because you don't want to run the risk of catching yourself being a jerk. In the same way that over time you build up all this tension in your back from exercising or compulsively checking the internet...or drawing schematics for a gazelle-shaped community center....or having dreams about cooking up ham planes for the Fascist resistance.

So when someone comes along and really embarrasses you or really calls you out on something that you've neglected to see while you're so wrapped up in your own head, like the fact that some of your stories aren't interesting to anyone and it's a miracle you've even bothered remembering them,  it's a lot like rolling over a log of sweet mercifully painful foam. It hurts, and you're shattered for a second, but if you avoid denial or hatred and really try to understand someone's honest perception of you (even if they're being a jerk about it) it can help you breathe a little easier. Yeah, you can be a jerk and you're not that special and your back is a knotted mess of worry and tension.

Cuz that's honesty. And the fun part of life is when honesty collides with your delusions and shocks you and it hits you with this pain that's like, "THIS IS REAL LIFE!". Like a dreidel you've been staring at for the past eight months finally stands up and puts on a hat and says, "Time to get back to my job putting down stray cats at the animal shelter."

And you're like, "Dreidel! I had no idea! I thought you were just a dreidel!"

And that switch, that moment where you're straddling between what you thought was true and what has walked up and slapped you in the face demanding to be the real truth, is probably the most fun you can have with your brain's pants still on.