MitchWords: Part One

Hey Avid Fan Base, welcome to my new column that I will hopefully do pretty regularly. I call it MitchWords, because it'll be a bunch of words written down by me, Mitch. And for now I'm leaving the suitable topics pretty open ended. Maybe I'll talk about theology. Maybe I'll talk about graphic literature. Maybe I'll talk about both. Maybe I'll talk about neither. I foresee MitchWords as a place for me to ramble, rant, and get things off my chest.



This column will be a place where you can get to know the writer of Wednesday Theology a little better, should you be interested in that sort of thing. Now, that's going to be rather new to me. I tend to be a rather private person. My close friends know me well, but I imagine I exist as a shadowy fog to most of my acquaintances.

But if any of you have been observing my Facebook lately, you've seen I've been going through a bit of personal turmoil lately. I am currently in pain. I do hurt. And I reacted the only constructive way I knew how: I sent a call out for prayers. And boy did I get a response. For me, it was overwhelming, especially looking at some of the people that acknowledged my request and took the time to let me know they were thinking of me and wishing me well.

As I said, I'm a quiet, private person. Reaching out to others does not come easy to me. But right now, more than ever, I need to know that I'm not alone. So this is me once again trying to put the First Truth of Batman into action. But I don't want this exchange to be one sided. I shouldn't ask for help without ever explaining why. I think some sort of explanation is needed. This shouldn't get bogged down in gossip or juicy personal details, though. That's not what I want. This blog gives me a platform, but I feel like I don't really have a public persona to go with it.

It can be hard to divulge details about myself. That's just not how I usually work. But sometimes, in the end, it doesn't really matter if I confide in one person or the masses. The result can be the same.

At the conclusion of Childish Gambino's newest album, Camp, the artist includes a spoken afterward to the song "That Power." He describes an incident while returning on a bus from summer camp one year. He confesses his affection to a girl, but it doesn't really go anywhere, and he ends up taking a nap for the rest of the ride. When he wakes at his destination and prepares to exit the bus, a group of girls come up to him and begin laughing and mocking him for what he said to this girl. He was shocked that such a personal exchange had very quickly become public knowledge. And this is what he took away from it:

"I told you something. It was just for you and you told everybody. So I learned to cut out the middle man, make it all for everybody, always. Everybody can't turn around and tell everybody. Everybody already knows. I told them."

So maybe here I'm trying to cut out the middle man. If I throw it all up on this blog then I can't be surprised if someone I never expected to know suddenly talks to me about this. Now, should I do this with every thing that happens in my life? Of course not. What to share and what not to share is a judgement call I'll have to make. But this is an attempt to put more of me in this blog, for better or worse. And anyone who has been following along this week can probably see that this is definitely impacting what I write and how I write.

If you read Wednesday Theology then I figure I owe it to you to mention what's going on. So here goes.

I dated a girl for three and a half years. We were in love. It was amazing. It made everything in life feel awesome. After such a lengthy relationship, you can understand why I wholly expected her to be "the one." But then one night she called me up and broke up with me. She said she wanted a break and that after a little while we could work on getting back together and communicating better. Unfortunately, "communicating better" turned out to be barely communicating at all. And when we did finally get around to trying to make things work, the effort, at least to me, seemed lackluster.

I probably should have taken this all as a sign. But I held out hope. Unrealistic hope, as it happened. But the break-up over the phone crushed me and I turned into a bitter and angry man. I become quite self-destructive and lashed out, hurting some people close to me. But I still had that hope that things would work out.

Last weekend we talked over the phone again. She killed all that hope. Her love for me is no longer there and she has moved on. And that killed as much as the initial breakup, probably more. Because at least at the start of this I had hope that it wasn't final. But now she's taken that away from me.

My chest feels constantly constricted. It's like I'm having a never ending heart attack while feeling the urge to vomit all day long. The pain of a broken heart is unbearable. I'd rather have another kidney stone. I'd rather have a perpetual series of kidney stones. And I don't say that lightly. Believe me, I know the gravity of a kidney stone scenario.

And that's the sorry state that I'm currently in. But this time I remembered the First Truth of Batman right from the start and almost immediately reached out to friends and family. I'm not alone. I don't have to fight this alone. Maybe you think it's odd that I'm gleaning such inspiration from a Batman comic book. But if you look around this blog, I think you'll realize it fits perfectly into how my mind works. It's just another example of finding the divine in the profane. In a way, it's putting Wednesday Theology into practice (random idea for a sequel to my thesis: "Practical Wednesday Theology").

So there you have it. Now you know. But I'm not going to get into the blame game or lash out in spite and bitterness, despite how dearly my shattered heart would like to. Instead I'm reaching out to you and cutting out the middle man. Maybe putting words to the page will help me find solace and act as a therapeutic coping mechanism. Maybe a collective comprehension of my misery will help the pain dissipate.

Words affect people. I know that in some small way the words I write here will affect whoever reads it, even if just in a minute, unrecognizable way. But people reading my words also affects me. For now I know that you understand me a little better, or have at least heard something that I've had to say. That transference of words can be powerful.

And with that, I'll conclude this first edition of MitchWords. Hopefully any following entries in the column won't be quite so full of despair. Right now all I can say is that this is what's going on in my life. I thought I'd put it out there for anyone that would like to know. Even if no one reads it, it was probably a healthy process for me to engage in.

Thank you.