The tale of an artic blast, or how Michelle Kwan saved my Life.

I've had problems with depression since the 4th grade. No one knew what it was back in the late 70's, or that a child could suffer from it but I did. I woke up one morning in grade four and I was unable to get out of bed. I was consumed with sadness and fatigue. I believe I came to the planet a hyper sensitive soul and I had consumed all the unpleasantness I could and I just shut down.
In the 8th or 9th grade I discovered that alcohol could make you feel good. I had no coping mechanisms or tools at all. At home , my family was a mess and at school I was the constant target of hatred. It started in third grade being called "sissy" and as we all grew older the words became uglier and uglier and . I turned to food and alcohol to give myself breaks in the tension. I never felt safe, emotionally I wasn't safe at home and school was a nightmare.

I had years and years of depression that resisted treatment, and I learned to self medicate . I got to a point where I could not generate any positive or good feelings on my own. Then a curious thing happened,  In the very early nineties I saw by accident a Asian girl skate on tv. She was so tiny  her skating costume actually sunk in where she should have had hips. I made a note to myself to watch for this Michelle Kwan. The next year was the hideous Tonya Harding clubbing and it brought skating to a national forefront. After the Olympics, Nancy Kerrigan passed on worlds and that left this tiny, unadorned Chinese girl  as the sole chance for the U.S.A to finish in the 8 at the World Championships in order to be able to send two girls then next year. She delivered a great set of skates and secured two spots for the ladies the next year.

The next year she underwent a very dramatic Hollywood style makeover for her skating. She came out in full makeup and dazzling costumes. She was suddenly the champion.

Because of years and years of being dead on the inside, I was surprised when I watched Michelle skate that I felt feelings of life inside me. There was something about the art and movement she created and delivered with her full heart that allowed me to feel, feelings I couldn't feel on my own.

I think it was in 97 she had a couple of bad skates at the worst possible times, a year before the Olympics. She fell in competition at Worlds and when she got up there was a look on her face that betrayed her. She was lost, in fear and couldn't not get her bearings for a second. I was kind of devasted for her because I know with atheletes, was them mental game wavers, sometimes they never come back.

But she did come back, and in 1998, she skated in a fashion forward icy blue lavender slip dress to "Lyra Angelica". It was the first time in history I had seen someone literally burn the fucking barn down with brilliance. It wasn't the string of perfect scores that moved me, or her incredible artistry. It was the fact that she came back from the worst competition year she ever  had and triumphed in the face of all the people that said she was finished. She won the battle with self doubt and she was simply fantastic.

From that point on, when I could muster no hope of my own, when my soul had gone dark. I would pull out the VHS of The National Figure skating Championships 1998. I  would feel moved in my soul because of the performance and then I would hang on to the fact that if she beat her doubt that I could too. My tape broke so i bought one from some stranger on the internet. It's a gift of spirit for a human to do something musical or artistic and actually stir the feelings of the dead like I was. When I could find no peace and no hope I pulled out Michelle Kwan VHS tapes and could feel something lovely in a very ugly place I lived in.

For every disappointment she had on the ice, she was never anything but beautiful and courteous. She never tried to make her loss, over shadow the one that won. She was always kind in the face of turmoil.

I would love to tell her thank her one day, although it is a long story and I don't come off that well in it.

I found successful treatment for my depression and my substance abuse problems and I am proud to say that today I self-generate my own good feelings and I got rid of all but one of my Michelle Kwan clunky VhS plus there is YOUTUBE.  Just moments ago I watched her 2003 Dallas Championship win and was moved to misty eyes and a tightness in my chest. Partly because it was so perfect and so beautiful and partly because her skating days are over and she will not be creating anymore ice magic for me me to lose myself in. Whatever spiritual ideas you subscribe to, I know that the girl from Torrence was a gift to the world and I will forever be grateful that she participated in the opportunities that came her way.

When I had no loveliness of my own, she shared hers with me and all the people lucky enough to watch that Thorough Bred Run. Thanks M.K. Thank you for reminding me that when you get knocked down, you just get up again and start over, and that there is beauty available to us on this planet when we look for it.

Chaos sneaks up fast.

I suddenly realized yesterday I was ready to find a rifle and head for a tower because I had reached that point. You know that point where you knew you couldn't take any more but didn't no how to stop it and worse how you got there. I was vibrating so fast that all I could do in clench my jaw and every other muscle. It was miserable, I had collected so much crazed holiday energy and expectations that I reach my max. I had to hit the reset button. and for me that is  sleep and talking about what is going on. It's hard for me to list the things that are not working for me because I sort of escaped childhood with the misconception when you list the things that are wrong in your life, you are complaining and whining. So it's very un-clinton to share with others what is going on inside my head, my spirit and in my feelings. I feel better. I feel like I was it with a truck, but better over all. I didn't even think about using drugs to alter my feelings, but I did order a pizza and had copious amounts of choc. Milk in the last 20 hours.

Christmas as a non Christian is a trip

I'm not Christian so the whole "birth of our savior" thing is kind of lost on me. I love a lot of people who are christian and I am hopeful for them they get out of this day what they need to get out of. In my childhood and young adult I spent the christmas seasons frightened out of my mind. It brought out the worst in my family. My sister is still the MOST ungrateful person on the planet, my mother fraught with expectation so high no one could reach them, and my dad just miserable that his life was,,,,well his life. He hated his job and it ate his soul daily so spending the blood money from it on useless gifts was hard to watch for him. I was stuck in the middle of being the only feeler in the family, enjoyment out of getting great gifts, and guilt because I could read the very air we stood in and it was gasoline waiting to be lit.

I was sooooo relieved when I finally convinced my mother not to put a tree out because it was the symbol of expectation and hideous moments to come. I joke every year that if I had beaten cancer, I would not trot out a giant tumor and festoon it with glass and beads and lights. It was the harbinger of disaster.

I'm not scared of this day any longer. I have no expectations and since Jesus is not my personal savior I am released from the religious aspect as well.  I wish the goodwill and love that was practiced at christmas could be spread out through the year. People are hungry on July 19 just as much as December 25. People are homeless everyday of the year. If people were really interested in being like their Christ, they would find a way to embody his ideas of , love, compassion , forgiveness and service to others every day and not just when they need to feel good about themselves. I don't think you get any bonus points for doing service if the reason your are doing it is to be seen doing them or to make yourself feel good. lol

Note to my friend, my KINDRED in CA

Well, your email just made my Christmas. I am the most fortunate person I know. Not for the obvious reasons(legs eyes, ability to toilet myself) lol  but mainly for being able to function for as long as I functioned, asleep/deadened to my true self only to wake up to this beautiful dream. In the last few days my spirit has either received an upgrade or it's opened up and all the years I felt like I was behind a glass wall that kept me from the rest of the human experience has seemed to shatter. Just for today, I lived long enough to waken from the dream of separation. The universe seems to have a way of creating for us whatever we believe in our heads, thankfully and I mean that, I have started to re-order the what I hold in my head and heart and woke up in a different world. As I mentioned in the letter you were the first person to crack open the door to the possibility of a different existence for me. I try to pay that forward as often as possible. I so honor the space you take up on this planet. 

There was this tall very blond 23 year old at a meeting the other night, and he shared that he lived in the woods by the lake and that he had a bus ticket to a town with a different lake and he didn't know what to do. He wasn't ashamed and talked about it in such a 3rd party way that he was completely separated from himself and the horror.  Girl I've never had to fight of sobbing in a meeting but the fact that this beautiful kid had a disease that told him he deserved to live in the woods because that is all he deserved pushed all my buttons of how the diseases first of Alcoholism, then full fledged addiction told me lies about the fact that I was separated at birth from all of the possibilities for love and life that every other person on the planet had. My disease told me all the time that I need to live on the streets, under a bridge. That is why I have always had a connection with homeless people when I bump into them I guess. It reminds me of this song called "No one ever it to blame" and the lyrics were like "You can look at the menu but you just can't eat" and "your the fastest runner but your not allowed to win". I told the kid he didn't deserve to live in the woods and that the disease of addiction lies. Perhaps his soul can wake up from the lie and maybe my experience can help that happen sooner rather than later.

This Christmas, which serves mainly as a mile marker for where I was in any given year, finds me with a spirit bigger than it has ever been. I know the secret that the more I give away freely the more my spirit fills this giant ass texas size man body I have. I sent that picture of me and I have used it for several things on the net because it was the first picture I have had of myself where i looked at it with great love and said, "that's me, that's what I look like". Just finding the basics out about myself like a child. "That's me, that's what I look like".  I am glad I know that, and I'm glad I know you and I know what you look like. I couldn't be happier to have you in my experience on the planet. I love you and all your fucking little quirks and thank you for doing the same for me. We aren't easy but my god xxxx, we are SPECTACULAR as spirits in human form.

Don't let the fuckers bring you down, love

Clinton

It's scary being human.

I've opened up a lot over the last few days. I am much more suceptible to being moved by acts of humanity in front of me. I had to keep myself from crying (good crying) 2 times in the last 24 hours. All my life I have wanted to feel that kind of connection yet I hold myself back from fully enveloping it when it happens because having my shield of  protection down is just creepy. It makes me feel ultra vulnerable but it is a step in the right direction in my journey to being a whole human. It's thrilling but scary and it's alot like riding a roller coaster. I'm scared but something perhaps my soul or the part of me connected to spirit yells , MOREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.  I'm rolling with it and if I get blindsided, so be it.

a curtain reveal today.

 A while back I was feeling sort of like a duck out of water. I have so many friends that fall into the traditional spiritual/christian block that I often am very limited with conversations with people who are thinking outside tradition and really in this world to think and discover new ideas  and to find out for themselves what it all means rather than traditional thinking which is really not pro thinking. The bad thing that supposed Adam and Eve did was eat from "The tree of knowledge" which pretty much sets up religion based on the lore that you aren't suppose to question and think for yourself. So I had made mention to the flow/the universe that I was aching to have someone that I could bounce new ideas, revelations or concepts on and they could do the same with me. I was sitting outside the hall today and I realized that quietly and without notice, someone I knew for 2 years had slipped into the role that I had asked the universe for. He is someone  I would have never imagined becoming close friends with because my assumption that we were so different, and I was wrong, as so often when we "assume". I felt so warm and cared for when I realized my request had not only been granted but it was filled simply by sliding one of my acquaintences into full on friend role. We are not the same in any way except he has the same gnawing desire to learn and question and live and share and he knows that life without spirit is no life at all. Such a lovely suprise.

The blur that is my history, what was real and what was real fucked up.

I had a girl talk today and she mention how almost immediately her friends complained about the change that came over her the minute she began to use drugs, then I read a story online of a young woman who was laying in bed her head dizzy with the fact she had just finally lost her virginity. When she mentioned it to her party partner and bed mate that she was excited about losing her virginity finally. He looked at her and said, "I'm not sure what your talking about we had sex two nights ago".  She had not been away there naked fooling around had actually turned in to real sex because she was to drunk. The blur, the fuzz that envelops me when I use distorts EVERYTHING. Nothing about me functions normally, I perceive nothing normally , all my thoughts and feelings and emotions are warped. Upside down and backward is my normal diseased being. Even now when I experienced certain things I have to run it by someone else to make sure I am perceiving it correctly. When I look at my past, I must now be aware that I am seriously looking at it through fun house goggle.

How I know I am human

I was a really good Clinton Gandy imposter for most of my life. I was good at knowing the perfect thing to say, whether it was real or made up on the spot. What you thought of me mattered me than what I thought of me and no matter how much that you like me, I knew something you didn't. You didn't know me at all so it was all very empty. I read a book that uses the word "parody" in it. I come from theatrical roots so I was more than familiar with the term, but I had never associated it with my personal life. That's what I was , I was a parody. I was an exaggerated version of a character loosely based on myself. I was a good copy of a poor original, a good production of a really bad play.
I'm better now. On most days, I don't allow you to write the story of my life and certainly don't wait for you to put value on my existence. These days I am actually finding my own value, my own strengths and my own ideas of what makes my life worth living. I know who I am when no one is looking. I"m the most authenic version of myself than I have ever been and i suspect no reason to not believe I can only get "truer" as I live a life based on love, service, compassion and forgiveness of myself and others.

If these thoughts to provoke/inspire you, well, you are dead inside. lol

"There are two emotions: love and fear." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"You can accept or reject the way you are treated by other people. But until you heal the wounds of your past, you are going to bleed." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"We have a tendency to always test people's love. 'I want to see how badly I have to behave before you'll leave me. Because I don't really think you want me anyhow.'" — Iyanla Vanzant 

"You are never angry for the reason you think you are. There's an older hurt under that."
— Iyanla Vanzant 

"My favorite definition [of forgiveness] is giving up the hope that the past could be any different."
— Oprah 

"Create what you want as opposed to being stuck in what you didn't have." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"The best students get the hardest lessons." — Iyanla Vanzant

"Our beliefs become the rules we live by, and then here's what happens: We make ourselves right." — Cheryl Richardson 

"Affirmation plus action equals miracles." — Cheryl Richardson 

"Every word you speak and every thought you think is an affirmation for your future."
— Cheryl Richardson 

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, and not our darkness, that frightens us."
— Marianne Williamson, quoted during the webcast by Oprah 

"The key belief—Gary Zukav said this many years ago—the key belief is whether or not you believe the universe is a compassionate and loving place. ... I would have to say, I believe that no matter what, no matter what difficulty, no matter what dark hour befalls me ... there's a rainbow in the cloud." — Oprah 

"If you want a divorce, you're already alone. Because ... you're married to a person you don't want to be with." — Martha Beck

"When you don't show up as who you are, people fall in love with who you're not. Then when they find out who you are, that's when they leave." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"Just give yourself permission to tell the truth to yourself." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"Stay in your car in your lane on your road in your world. Stay in your own lane. Don't be minding other people's spiritual business. Stay in your car. In your lane. On your road. In your world." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"That's ... what Gary Zukav says about authentic power: Authentic power [is] when the personality comes to serve the energy of your soul."—Oprah 

"Very often as adults we still behave like we can't say this. We can't do that. We can't ask for this. ... We deal with people as if we're children who don't have the right to speak up. Deal adult to adult." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"Love people enough to tell them the truth. And respect them enough to know that they can handle it." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"If you start from the place of being grateful—this is what I love when I keep a gratitude journal, trying to do at least five things in a day that I'm grateful for—it means you look at the day differently." — Oprah 

"You are the only one who gets to say what goes on in your life. And when you say something—that this is going to go on in my life—[and] then it doesn't work, you get to say something else. ... Make another choice in another moment." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"Life gives you an endless supply of do-overs." — Iyanla Vanzant