{"id":7883,"date":"2008-03-21T08:28:59","date_gmt":"2008-03-21T12:28:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=7883"},"modified":"2022-10-14T23:15:18","modified_gmt":"2022-10-15T03:15:18","slug":"catharsis-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=7883","title":{"rendered":"Catharsis"},"content":{"rendered":"

I absolutely loved the honesty in this post<\/a>. Thank you!<\/p>\n

I cry all the time, so I don’t have that particular situation – but his beautiful post made me think of my obsessions that come over me from time to time about certain actors (ahem<\/a>, ahem<\/a>, ahem<\/a>) … and how often those obsessions are harbingers of something else going on, something I am yearning to express, but can’t … indicators of loneliness, perhaps … the fierceness of love that doesn’t exist in my life … it’s like I am able to revert, when the obsessions are at their height – revert to a time when I could love like that with no fear, when I could just throw myself into the experience (or, to quote Ann Marie: “I will<\/i> propel myself into the blazing star”) – and there have been dark months (I have written about this before) when whatever obsession is going on has acted almost as a protective shield – or, no, that’s not right. Let me put it another way.<\/p>\n

The fall of 2007 was not easy for me. I walked around in psychic pain. But, running parallel to all of that, was my Dean Stockwell fantasia … and in some way, it acted as a storage unit, that’s more like it … where I could protect the delicate open sensitive side of me – for safe keeping, when I might need it in the future. Everything else in me was exposed – raw, flayed nerves, waking up with a heavy heart, everything a trial<\/i>. And make no mistake: things can<\/i> be killed. For good. Things like hope, optimism, softness, joy. Those things are not<\/i> to be taken for granted because I have met people in whom those things appear to have been killed forever. I couldn’t just walk through the world, though, exposing my hope, optimism, joy … well, first of all, because I couldn’t find my way to them anyway. They were in hiding. They did not exist, as far as I was concerned. But as I watched every movie Dean Stockwell made, as I traveled to New Mexico to meet the man <\/a>… it was like I was taking huge chunks of myself, parts that I wanted to protect, and hiding them away … knowing they would be safe where they were, for the time-being. I suppose if you have never had such an experience – this all might sound rather odd. And maybe even stalker fan-girl stuff. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something else. Catharsis. And the possibility thereof. Life is tough. I am in a struggle right now to just keep going<\/i>, to not be submerged. And these movie-actor obsessions that sweep over me – usually once a year – have a way of safeguarding the precious, the sacred … I am not fully conscious of the process, as in, I don’t say to myself, “Hey, life is tough right now … I think I’m long overdue for an obsession with an actor!” No. It always hits me unawares and it always hits me when I need it the most (looking back on it). Sometimes I can even mark a year by its obsession. “Oh, that was my Jeff Bridges year. I remember that.” I’ve been doing this for years. Obviously it fills a deep deep void in me – and sometimes people get embarrassed for me (it’s happened on the blog) – but not usually, because it seems that what I do is something that most of us do – to some degree, about something. If not about actors, then something else. Authors, motorcycles, classical music, military history, whatever. I am not sure what other obsessives think about what they are doing, but for me – it keeps things alive when the going gets rough. It’s a way to hunker down. Again, none of this is conscious. I don’t scream at myself, “Batten down the hatches! Storm a-blowin’! Take Hope, Joy and Optimism and hide them below decks – NOW!” No, it’s more organic than that. Like the blogger above says – it serves a need – obviously a deep need. Something to think about, perhaps, when the storm passes.<\/p>\n

And so I have Ralph Macchio, Harrison Ford, Sting, John Stamos (as Blackie Parrish on General Hospital<\/i>, primarily), James Dean, Matthew Broderick, Mickey Rourke, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Dean Stockwell … to thank, for helping me keep essential things not only safe, but alive. For when the storm passes. It’s worked every time. There’s always a bit of sadness in the obsessions, because I recognize what it is that I am missing … what I have always missed, come to think of it … but that’s okay. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s got to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I absolutely loved the honesty in this post. Thank you! I cry all the time, so I don’t have that particular situation – but his beautiful post made me think of my obsessions that come over me from time to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[66],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7883"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7883"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181607,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7883\/revisions\/181607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}