Dear Internet 5: Covering Up the Old Tattoos
Dear Internet,
With my sixth session coming up tomorrow I wanted to take some time to reflect on what I’ve learned. I have a feeling my therapist will ask if I’ve tried to broaden my intellectual horizons, learned anything new. So let’s see here… Tomatoes are in the same family as belladonna nightshade—you know, that plant that kills you… um, there are 573 federally recognized Native Nations in the US… oh, a group of crabs is called a cast. That’s… not very interesting, I guess. I read on the Internet that the difference between a graveyard and a cemetery is a graveyard is attached to a Church—part of the yard, yeah? A cemetery is just a plot of land where people dump their dead and stick a rock on top.
Spock: “That is highly illogical.”
Kirk: “How is a graveyard illogical?”
Spock: “A Church, from what I gather from ancient Earth history, was a sacred place of worship and reverence. The word ‘cemetery’ sounds more reverential than ‘graveyard’.”
Kirk: “Yes, true, but you can’t deny that a graveyard is literally what one would find behind a Church. Wouldn’t that make it the most logical out of the two words?”
Spock: “And this, Captain, is why humans were never regarded for their logical reasoning ability.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about why my doc would even want me to learn as a treatment for suicide. Like, why is learning his “no, don’t?” It didn’t make much sense to me at first. It felt like some bullshit he was saying to buy time for me, so to speak. But aside from a cast of crabs (live at Madison Square Garden!), I’ve learned a new perspective. Not so much fun facts, but like I’m slowly painting a picture in my mind, or maybe covering up an old tattoo. That one probably makes more sense. The old tattoo was my old view of the world, my perceptions of people and how things worked—cynical, unbalanced, without perspective and nuance. Each book I read adds new ideas and points of view on the world I hadn’t thought of, both by fictional characters and from history. Reading scientific articles and listening to science podcasts gives me new information that shatters old stereotypes I was raised on. And those ideas, points of view, and science literacy have shown me the imperfections of my old tattoo. The jagged lines, the fading colors, the out-of-proportion and shaky details come into focus. This new knowledge has acted as a lens through which I can see how terrible a job my childhood did at tattooing me. And now I’m working on the cover-up.
So maybe that’s what my doc wanted me to do. Instead of being told why I shouldn’t go and off myself, he wanted me to stick around and learn for myself. “No, don’t” becomes “here’s something interesting.” Score one for the doc.