Exploiting the Archives, Emo Edition: Articles Elsewhere About Feelings and Shit
Me, emotional dunce
As chronicled in my piece about emotional epiphanies engendered by watching Inside Out, I have a very complicated relationship with my emotions. In theory, I am in favor of both emotions in general and letting yourself experienced emotions. In actuality, I am not so secretly a big believer that emotions, at least my own, must be violently suppressed and buried, or they’ll destroy you from the inside.
So while I’m not a fan of actually having emotions, I am in favor of writing about emotions and more particularly my own messy, complicated emotional life. Some of my very favorite pieces ever about the deeply embarrassing subject of feelings.
For The Dissolve, I wrote about how watching Short Term 12 allowed me to have more empathy and compassion for the angry, rage-filled group home-imprisoned juvenile delinquent and all-around ne’er do well I used to be, and perhaps always will remain on some level. Looking back, the essay is something a companion piece for my article on how Inside Out helped me better understand my coping mechanisms and my internal life.
I took my time seeing both Short Term 12 and Inside Out, fearing that both would hit entirely too close to home. I was right but I’m glad that I overcame my reluctance because it turns out great art is great for the soul, even if it can be painful and sob-inducing in the short, or even long term.
During my final months in Chicago, I wrote an essay for Salon about the depression and sadness I experienced following Declan’s birth and how my fear of inadequacy cast a dark shadow over the happiest event of my life: the birth of my son. The birth of my second child lurks in my very near future (it should happen within the next month) and I’m pleased to say I feel a lot more confident this time around.
Speaking of periods of profound personal, professional and financial uncertainty, I wrote this melancholy piece for LongReads about the twofer of getting fired and moving into my in-laws’ basement. and this piece about getting roped in by a dodgy debt consolidation company for for first the Mental Illness Happy Hour blog and then Gawker.
And, of course, if you really want to read more about the fucked up haunted house that is my brain, you can read my trilogy of memoirs of madness, mental illness and Faygo: The Big Rewind, You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me and my personal favorite, 7 Days in Ohio (because I actually benefit financially from people buying it).
Enjoy my pain!
Honor twenty-one years of unwise self-disclosure and intermittent excellence in personal writing over at http://patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace