Blogging as Exorcism?

Yes, I know that posts here on my blog have been getting "grittier." It was not so much a conscious choice, but part of the process, I guess. The more I wrote, the more in touch I got with what I was really feeling--and the more I wrote about really feeling, the further I got into and beyond the terror.

It's as if the act of writing it down makes it possible to belch it out in all its ugliness, and then I don't have to carry it around inside anymore. It feels good to make light of some of the funnier and more bizarre parts of this journey, those stories entertain me too. But sheer horror is part of this as well, and ignoring it, pushing it away, pretending it wasn't there and writing about something else--that wasn't working for me anymore.

You don't have to read it, but by God, I need to write it. I will continue to "screen" those posts behind a warning, so you'll have a choice about subjecting yourself to that kind of darkness.

I told a friend yesterday that this all seems eerily like an ancient purification process, an emptying out of all the negative energy before girding myself up for battle like a medieval knight. Each time I hit one of these bad spots, I emerge a little stronger, a little less scared, like I'm ramping up a scale of tolerance for what I can handle, a bit at a time. This is how I'm getting ready.