#mezrab

14.09

Vegan cream cheese and rereading a book I love.

Benji’s night of stories & Friends 

Benji’s night of stories & friends 

It’s my first week of full-time storytelling school. We’re learning to break stories down to their essence and then build them up again from our own experiences; make age-old tales our own.

I’m not sure I should be doing this. I’m still not fully recovered from a pretty bad mental breakdown. Still in therapy. Still more than overwhelmed by life. I’ve lost the ability to put on a mask. What I feel, is what you see. And oftentimes, it isn’t pretty. That’s hard for people to deal with. So for a while now, I’ve been isolating myself and making sure to avoid big emotions when among others. But here I am, trying to avoid overwhelming emotions by carefully choosing a story that won’t trigger any mother-memories and somehow ending up with a story that’s twisted itself into an analogy of my breakdown. 

Can I share this story? 

When I practice at home, I’m overwhelmed by emotions and find myself crying and inadvertently raising my voice. My mind goes back to the beginning of my breakdown, when my masks started slipping and I stopped being able to control my emotions or hide them. Stopped being able to pretend. And how since then everyone’s been telling me that I’m “in a bad place”. I’ve heard those words too often.

How do I control my emotions when telling a tale? 

I’m standing in front of my classmates, telling my tale. I feel my chest tighten, the emotion run through my body, fear, anger, sadness, guilt, despair. My voice is raised. I’m yelling now, the emotions rushing out with the words of my main character. When my story’s over, for a moment, nobody moves. A weird extended silence before my classmates and teachers start clapping. I want to run out of the room. I feel like I know what they’re going to say. That I’m unstable, in a bad place, unwell. Then my teacher speaks, slowly and decidedly:

“You are in a very good place.” 

Turns out, unlike the real world, in storytelling not being able to wear a mask is a very good thing. My type of insanity a plus? I think this school might be the right choice after all! Now I just need to learn how to keep those unmasked emotions from running away with me. I hope they cover that in class too.

Want to hear what that story became once I learned to tame my emotions a bit? Click here to listen to my story Golem (12 mins), my story begins @ 27.30 mins.