Dealing + Feeling = Healing

Sorting Through Emotional Landmines

Photo by Jeremy Yap on Unsplash

Confession: Even though I technically moved into my new place last summer, I still haven’t finished unpacking.

There are too many boxes and piles filled with emotional “landmines.”

So let’s just say I’ve been taking my time getting settled. In other words, I’ve been putting the “pro” in procrastination for far too long.

Since the move, my progress has been in fits and starts. Y’all, I still haven’t hung up any of my beloved art! So it’s about damn time I dealt with all the mess and all the stress. Slowly but surely and bird by bird, I’m organizing the piles of files, unpacking the boxes, and finally make my house feel like a home.

Yesterday, after a few hours spent writing and doing photo research, I decided to restart the process of tidying up. Nothing serious. Just some organizing. A drawer here. A box there. Stretching and warming up for the real work ahead.

That was my intention. But that’s not what happened.

Instead, I opened a few boxes of ephemera and inadvertently stepped on several emotional landmines. I froze, overwhelmed by old family photographs; cards from friends; programs from plays, graduations, and funerals; magazine and newspaper clippings I don’t recall saving; and miscellaneous artifacts from lives that feel both intimately mine and strangely foreign.

The boxes and piles are proof that I have always been a collector. They’re also proof that time keeps ticking, no matter who or what you are. I collect things and hold onto moments. Without realizing it, unpacking has become an archaeological dig.

There is something uniquely destabilizing about dealing with physical memories in a digital age. You can scroll past old pictures online with a kind of emotional buffering. Algorithms, filters, and time soften the blow.

But a real photograph? A real letter? Those hit different. Those require muscles that have atrophied. Those engage all my senses, especially my sense of time and space.

That’s when I realized I wasn’t just tidying up. I wasn’t warming up anymore. I was dealing, feeling, and healing all at once.

I have spent a lot of my life being very good at dealing. Doing what needs to be done. Moving forward. Staying functional. Staying witty. Staying upright. Dealing is survival. Dealing is how I keep the lights on, the jokes flowing, and the wheels turning.

But feeling is messier. Feeling is slower. Feeling is less productive.
And feelings do not fit neatly into boxes. Literal or metaphorical.

Here’s an annoying truth I keep bumping into lately:
Dealing without feeling just delays the healing.

Those boxes and piles don’t just contain objects. They contain unfinished business and conversations. Versions of myself I thought I outgrew. Grief I intellectualized instead of processed. Joy I forgot to celebrate. Regrets I avoided because they felt indulgent or dramatic or unhelpful.

It turns out all those messy, pesky emotions are just human. I am just human.

As I try to make sense of the skeletons in my closet (and in my garage), I’m also poking through the ruins of my so-called digital life.

It’s been over four years since I meaningfully showed up on social media. No posting. No updates. Just occasionally liking and lurking. Observing. It was a much-needed retreat from the easily outraged, sometimes performative version of myself I used to present online. But it’s time to reconnect with folks I don’t see on a regular basis.

Part of my social media hiatus was intentional, a response to burnout and the need to step back to grieve without narrating every moment for an invisible audience.

The other part of my hiatus, if I’m being honest, was avoidance.

Mostly avoidance of myself by myself. But also avoidance of the sometimes prying eyes of my dears, nears, and queers. I just wanted to disappear, and posting about what was going on in my life required a level of vulnerability I didn’t have. It meant risking being misunderstood, judged, or, even worse, ignored.

So now I am standing in this strange in-between space, asking myself:

• Do I want a social media presence again?

• And if so, which version of me gets to exist there?

  • The clever one?

  • The curated one?

  • The political one?

  • The thirst-trap-adjacent one?

  • The spiritual-but-not-religious one?

  • The soft one? The sad one? The honest one?

The old me knew how to brand himself. The current me is more interested in being real. Mighty real even. Most days anyway.

Thanks to this blog and this crew, I’m more okay with letting my “freak flag” fly, loud and proud. Messy or not, here I am and, ready or not, here I come.

So why am I so scared of unpacking my boxes and sorting through my piles? Why am I so scared of restarting my social media accounts?

Maybe because they are about identity and memory and uncomfortable questions:

• What do I keep, and what do I let go?

• Who do I keep, and who do I let go?

Not everyone or everything deserves a spotlight. Not every memory and relationship needs to move forward with me. Not every version of me needs to be resurrected.

But some people and things deserve more than a quick glance or a passing thought. They deserve careful handling, focused attention, and faithful patience. They deserve the space to be fully acknowledged and the time to be truly processed.

So I am trying a new equation: Dealing + Feeling = Healing.

Not dealing instead of feeling. Not feeling instead of dealing. Dealing and feeling together, letting productivity and vulnerability sit at the same table.

It may be slower, but it’s more effective. Healthier too.

I still don’t know what I am going to do with all the stuff in all the boxes and piles. Or with the digital ghosts of my past social media lives. But I do know this:

1. Avoidance is not peace.

2. Silence is not always privacy.

3. And healing doesn’t come from pretending emotional landmines don’t exist.

So what’s my point? It may be easy to avoid the “stuff.” It may be easy to ignore, scroll past, sweep under the rug, or pretend it doesn’t exist. But eventually, we have to deal with it. We have to feel it. If we want to heal. And I do. I really, really do.

What about you, boo? Are you ready to open a few boxes and sort through some files and piles? Are you ready to deal, feel, and heal too?

Keep calm and “Mighty Real” on!
Clint 🌈✌️

P.S. The last few posts may have been a bit heavy, so lemme lighten things up again with a clip from the film version of Sandra Bernhard’s Without You I’m Nothing, where Sandy weaves "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)," the Sylvester disco classic, into a heartfelt and hilarious story about two straight “bros” going to a gay bar…in 1978:

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