Downclimbing

I used to be a rock climber. I started rock climbing because heights terrify me. I was a quick study; you have to be, because if you aren't you tend to fall, which can kill you. 

I have the mind for it. I have this thing that I do, where I take my emotions and stuff them down. Swallow them and let them digest; they're absorbed, still there, but in a manageable form. It helps when one is fifty or so feet off the ground, with millimeters separating one from the air. You stand on a sliver of rock as wide as a nickel. Your fingertips are jammed into a crack that's maybe an inch across and an inch deep. The sliver feels like a sidewalk. The crack feels like a canyon. The fear is suppressed. It's as easy for me as holding my breath.

Climbing up is easy. You look skyward; no choice, really, because every foot and hand hold is above you. And you see them like a great DH sees a hanging curveball. Theoretically, you could climb and climb and climb and never know how high up you really are, because you'd never have to look down. True, your fear whispers at you, tries to get you to look down - oh, but it's so beautiful, the earth below, it loves you and gravity wants you to feel its embrace - but you can shut it off, save that fear for the stories you tell around the campfire.

Climbing down is another matter. You have to look down. And those gigantic holds? They're obscured. By you. You can't see past your legs and so you have feel for them and try to remember, in reverse order, where you put your hands and feet. You are blind. And Fear is shouting at you, and Fear's a long-winded motherfucker. Every fall can kill you, but your friends the earth and gravity and fear, we love you so so much. Now give us a hug.

This past week, the Public Relations Society of America held their annual conference here in San Diego. As any PR person will tell you (in bright, exuberant tones, with a relationship-building smile), this is a Big Deal for American PR types. Thousands of PR people gather to talk about stuff like market trends and Thought Leaders and crisis communications and sticky messaging. They invite well-know people and experts to speak and sit on panels, people like Arianna Huffington and Todd Buchholz. They have breakout sessions and leading those sessions are, well, Thought Leaders and media-savvy gurus and all manner of professionals. And this year Kami Huyse asked me to be on a panel. At first, I wasn't sure she had the right me. The other me probably knows a lot more about PR than this me. You want Star Wars references and fart jokes, I'm your man. 

But of course I did the panel; also representin' the dadbloggers was my friend Matthew Henry, he of Childs Play x2. (See? That's me! Scroll down. Stop. Back up. There. Me and Matthew, the only non-PR bloggers speaking at the biggest PR conference in the U.S. Booyah, as Stuart Scott would say.) The room was pretty big, and pretty full - coupla hundred people, by my estimation. All of 'em wanting to know how to Build Relationships With Me And Others Like Me. Kami asked me questions, the crowd asked me questions, I answered, and I'm pretty sure that many of my replies actually made sense. At least what I said made sense to me. I'm not a PR person. For all I know, my replies came off like an amateur rendition of a Klingon opera. (I also do Star Trek.)

After our allotted time had expired, we hung out and answered a few more questions from audience members. The last person to talk to me was a young guy. He was a father-to-be, and wanted to talk about blogging. He wrote, but hadn't done much on the Internet. I spoke to him about writing, about telling his story, regardless of who may or may not be listening. 

I was fine. Really.

The part of me that allows me to gag down feelings also acts as a self-diagnostic tool. I know myself. I know that sometimes I'm an asshole, that I'm rude, that I snap at people - Beth, Zoe, Lucas included, oh, and I yell at my dog a lot - and I'm not much of a socialite, at parties I withdraw and observe. I know that this used to be infrequent. Days when I moved through the world like a bull in the corrida, waiting for someone to gore, only to be put to the sword, used to be rare occurrences that could be chalked up to work or lack of sleep or lack of money or whatever. There used to be reasons for it. Used to be.

I used to be a lot of things. Mostly, I used to be someone who didn't see the world through a constant haze. Red. Grey. 

The note was handwritten - a professional referral by another doctor - and it was attached to the fridge by a magnet, right above pictures of me, and the kids, and me and Beth, and me and Beth and the kids. We're smiling in all of them. Something deep down pushed against confines that I'd constructed, and it wanted to hear this conversation. I thought about how my life had come to this, I wondered what it was going to be like, taking pills to lift the red and the grey, and I dialed the number. Ring. Ring. Voicemail. "You've reached the office of Dr. ___________. Please leave a message and I will return your call." Deep breath. Gravity wants to kill you, Fear whispered in my ear, and I want to watch. 

I step down into thin air and my toe finds purchase. It's as wide as a finger. It's enough. "Hi", I say. "I think I need some help."