The GateKeeper

My therapist, Black Eyed Susan, talks a lot about gatekeepers. The little voices in your head that try to control you and your emotions. Inside my head there a many little gatekeepers and one real big one. The one that controls the perpetually locked, chained and bolted massive iron gate across my mouth. He makes me think about everything I say and then usually doesn't let me say it. My wife might argue that, but it is true. All my life I have tended to be very careful about what I say and how I say it. It is very difficult for me to be spontaneous when talking. Even here and now when no one is listening I am hesitant to say what I feel. The watcher says a lot of different things to keep my mouth shut. That's stupid or wrong. You'll embarrass yourself if you say that. You can't let people know what you think or how you feel. They won't understand. No one is interested in that. Some times he has been right. I've said what I thought and it turned out to be way off base. Or no one cared, usually both. And he reminds me of that frequently. But more often he has been wrong. I didn't say the first thing that came to mind and it turned out later that I was right. Or that it would have been helpful. Or that I regretted not saying it.

One thing I found out late in life is that I could silence the watcher with a little bit of alcohol. A couple shots of Kentucky Bourbon and I could say what ever I wanted. It was fun. I could be funny. I knew that I was right. Everyone needed to hear what I had to say.

Now I am trying to shut the watcher up with out the alcohol. To have more confidence and say what I think.

My plan here is to write such boring drivel that no one will read it then I'll feel free to say what ever I feel like saying.

BONUS RANT: Why I don't use swear words. In the previous paragraph I used the expression "boring drivel". Even though I don't use cuss words in my everyday speech I had to toss out two synonyms for "feces" and think a while before I came up with the the word "drivel". The over use of expletives has severely reduced the once rich vocabulary in modern English speech. There are some speakers who use two nouns, two verbs, two adjectives, two adverbs and two interjections. Which wouldn't be so bad except they are all forms of the same two words.

OWL
March 29, 2007