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We’re all full of shit. I mean this on a metaphorical level, but, and we do NOT have to get into this at all, on a literal level too.
The title of this essay came from a thought that blossomed in my aching mind—I was battling a nasty cluster headache/migraine combination thing and was in my third boiling hot shower of the day trying to find some relief—and rattled around until Lady G returned home and I spewed it out at her like it should make some form of sense.
“Confrontations are like Colonoscopies!” I said to her when she walked through the door. My eyes were still shut I think, and I told her to remind me to write about it later. Later is now, as the genesis of the thought in that throbbing brain of mine, were situations that still exist in our lives, confrontations that still need to happen though no one ever seems to want to make them.
Truth told, I moved things around in order to talk about this today instead of later, instead of putting it off (just like the confrontations everyone seems to put off!) and addressing it later.
Confrontations are like colonoscopies, I’ve decided, and here’s why. Please note, I’ll do my best to avoid the fecal related follies when I go down this rabbit hole of a thought experiment, but I kind of think it’ll be impossible. Anyway, here goes:
You Gotta Go In Empty - I haven’t had my first colonoscopy yet, but I’ve seen many I love go through the process. Step one is you drink some giant gallon of strange clear liquid like you’re one of those dude bros at a gym that carries around a 5 gallon jug of water to show everyone how important hydration is. You force yourself to keep swallowing it like Dumbledore on that weird island with zombies crawling up on him in order to destroy the horcrux that turns out to be a replica anyway. Then, the party begins, then, everything you’ve ever put into your body, finds its way out. You do this, because if you don’t do this, the pictures that they are gonna try to take of your innards won’t work and you’ll have to repeat the whole process again. So too with confrontations. If you go in with all the shit you’ve ever been carrying against the person you’re gonna confront, the results will be muddy, you’ll be disappointed, and you’ll probably have to do it again with them later. Step one is clearing it all out, nothing happens before this, so stay near the metaphorical toilet of your emotions and purge it out first.
You’re Gonna Put It Off - Even if you know how much it needs to happen, even if you’ve been read the riot act by your doctors, your family members, your own singing conscience, you’re gonna want to put it off and you’re not gonna want to drink that poop-makin fluid. You’re gonna find a million reasons why you could just do it later. “It’s probably fine!” you’ll lie to yourself. So too with confrontations. There will always be a “better time” or a made-up reason why you don’t need to finally face the music that has been quietly (or loudly) playing in the room just opposite yours. You’re not going to want to say the words that need to be said, not going to want to look into their eyes and give them the benefit of your truthfulness. There’s always later, right? Wrong. The longer you wait, the more afraid you’ll be of it, the more you’ll build it up and the more terrifying the prospect of someone shoving a camera that must be at least a foot long and half a foot wide where the sun doesn’t shine in your own emotional centers will be.
You Probably Won’t Remember It - In a strange and compassionate twist of fate, everyone I’ve ever talked to said they don’t remember much at all about the colonoscopy. They remember the purging part, oh my god do they remember that bit, but the actual procedure, nope. They blacked out, sure with medical assistance, and before they could even whisper the words “farting with confidence” they were done, being driven home, and finally getting to eat solid food again. Even the pain and suffering associated with the initial dumping (pun so very intended) fades swiftly and is forgotten with a speed that can’t quite be explained. So too with confrontations. We spend so much energy inflating the consequences of these events, that almost every time we actually have them, we immediately feel better, we realize that we black out most of the actual events after it occurs, and then we’re riding off in some hazy stupor, emptied out of all the bullshit, ready to begin again. Even if the confrontation goes a bit South (again pun intended), it probably needed to happen, and with the grace of time you’ll realize that and feel better anyway.
You Might Just Prevent A Bigger Problem - We need confrontations for the very same reasons we need colonoscopies. Do you want to drink the shit-sauce and spend an entire day with cramps that buckle you in half and give you the trots to and from that porcelain prison? No. Do you want to lay on your side in a drugged fog and have a relative stranger shove a GoPro up your tickly spot? No. Do you want to find out you have to have them more often than you think you’re going to have them, and have everyone give you the sad and reassuring nod when you tell them that it’s on your schedule? No. Do you want to be all alone and have NO ONE NEAR YOU when the whole process begins? Yes. Tough beans friends. We need colonoscopies because they can absolutely work magic on catching very tiny problems before they have the chance to blossom into something even more terrifying. Before they spread and grow and become something so much worse, so much more serious. We need them to get a clear picture of what’s actually going on inside of us. So too with confrontations. So often, a confrontation is the precise and only medicine that can stop something very small, very innocuous, from turning into a life-altering, life-ruining, disease that metastasizes into every other part of your life and soul. Each time you face your own fears and actually confront the person, the situation, that you’ve been needing to, you receive in turn the clearer picture that allows you to address whatever is broken, or sometimes, that nothing is broken at all and all along it was a case of mistaken identity. Either way, in the long run, you win.
These confrontations can be for a multitude of reasons, they can be to address a million different problems, misunderstandings, misalignments of viewpoint or vision. The what, or the why, doesn’t really matter, it’s just that they need to happen.
The first step is always the purging, the second step is understanding that having these confrontations, these emotional colonoscopies, always seem to work better if we go in relaxed, if we go in emptied out, if we go in hoping for the best and understanding the reasons we’re going in in the first place.
We don’t need to carry the anger any further, we don’t need to worry any longer, we just need to be brave, be bold, and be willing to bro-carry that gallon of diarrhea-latte around until every drop has been drunk, every last bit of impacted emotional turd has been expelled, and the high resolution camera has been carefully inserted. The pictures will come back, and no matter what they show, they will at the very least let us formulate a plan to move forward with.
IF we’re lucky, we celebrate the good news and start eating solids again. If we’re not, we at least know what the problem is, and we can start to do something about it.
Drink the juice friends, purge it, and have those conversations you’ve been needing to have. No one wants to do it, but this year is a chance to finally be the people we’re meant to be, and we cannot do that without facing the little nagging fears, dealing with the little bits that we keep putting off, and allowing ourselves the indignity of being uncomfortable.
Confrontations are like colonoscopies, and we’ve all gotta have them.
If we turn to face
the source of our suffering,
it steals its power.
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