Paul's Diary

[Paul Gilmartin]

Do you have any idea how hard it was to not have my first sentence be "Dear Diary"?

For someone who has divulged so many intimate personal details on the podcast I feel strangely self-conscious writing here. Maybe because I always think of angst-ridden teenage girls when I think of a diary, not a 51 year-old guy who struggles to find a reason to get out of his recliner, or who sleeps till noon and really wants to sleep till two.

The biggest thing I'm dealing with right now is trying to decide how to tell my mom to not send me letters or packages anymore. I wish they didn't bother me but they do. They don't make me angry, they make me numb and then I feel sad for days. I was at therapy today and telling my therapist that I've been down for a few days, barely did anything this weekend and it's probably because my doctor changed my meds a few weeks back. Then a few minutes later I mentioned I got a package from my mom and my therapist laughed, like "THAT"S why you've been depressed." It made me laugh too. She's pretty awesome.

It's 2:30 am and I'm not even close to going to bed. I like how quiet it is late at night. I just finished watching The Price of Gold, a documentary about Tonya Harding. Really well done. She would be an interesting guest, but the more that I think of it, she would actually be a tough guest because she seems like she's really not honest with herself. I think we all are to some degree, but with her it feels really pronounced.

I can barely see the print on the screen and for all I know I'm making a thousand typos.

I really want to feel a consistent vigor in my life again. It's so erratic. So many days are spent struggling to get things done. I had to leave a friend's Bday party after 40 minutes on Saturday night. I just couldn't take being around so many people I didn't know. It was also at a church which made me uncomfortable, even though it's a super progressive church with gay & lesbian clergy, there's just something about church accoutrements that make my legs fall asleep and wedge a yawn in my throat. All I could think of was, "How long until I can get back to my recliner and drink green tea?" I know it's my depression.

Most of the time I'm grateful I've been what I've been through in my life because I know it's made me who I am, but some days I'm just so tired of the baggage it's left me with, especially the struggle to not have my day's primary emotion be dread or shame.

[OneJoeShort]

I've found that sleep patterns can be so harmful to my life if I let them get out of control, and that's exactly what I've let happen for the majority of my life. There's some sort of weird freedom I feel at this hour of night that makes me calm but anxious at the same time, eager to stay up but unable to actually do something worth staying up for, it's like a feeling of unrest or of needing to finish something but never actually finding what that thing is.

My logical parts tell me that while sleep issues aren't the direct cause for my troubles in life they do a very good job of destroying my potential to do anything good afterwards, especially when waking up anytime past Noon, instantly feels like the day is not worth saving because it's already defeated. Of course that then feeds into more easily staying up the next night... it's really stupid how simple it all is yet it just keeps happening.

If I were to give any sort of advice that I should actually be taking myself, I'd say find something that scares you and use that to motivate you. I consistently find that the only thing that wakes me from hibernation is an ultimatum that would give me great shame if I let it lie, for me that's missing a work shift. When I have work I get up no matter if I only slept 2 hours or 8, yet if I have just 2 days off my sleep habits get destroyed and with 4 days off work I am capable of totally inverting my sleep pattern and fully destroying my opportunities. I've often thought of moving into the city just so something would be open at these sorts of hours, so I could maybe wander the streets at least. Great ideas I know.

Find something that you know you would really love to do but that you might dread starting, and absolutely force yourself to do it as if it was filled with the shame of missing a work shift. Get up early and do it, then either feel satisfied or feel like this idea was the worst go back to sleep for a nap.

[duck1]

I really enjoyed reading this post.

[kitkat]

I was going to say it could be a 'journal' not a 'diary', but I was an angst-ridden teenage girl, and I called my diary a journal, so maybe it'd be the same thing, haha.

My boyfriend sent me this article recently about how studies found that productivity isn't related to waking up early, if that makes you feel better. He used to like to tell me I'd get much more done if I woke up earlier because he is a morning person, and I like to sleep in, but maybe now he'll stop, haha. It said that it more has to do with how long you sleep, and what hours you're the most productive, so if you sleep until noon, but you do the most late at night, then you don't have to feel guilty about that.

Of course getting letters from your mom would make you depressed! That just makes sense. I really don't know how to get her to stop, I mean, you can't block snail mail.. Hopefully she'll listen. :/

Sending you good vibes, and I hope you keep this diary up.

[Paul Gilmartin]

Here's a blog piece I posted on the website, but wanted to post here in case people wanted to chime in about their body shame.

Scar Tissue



I’m sitting here at my favorite coffee place wondering why I didn’t wear looser pants. My junk is swollen. Not with pleasure; with bruising and stitches and a Band-Aid.

I had a vasectomy yesterday and like many of the twelve operations I’ve had, they were more complicated than expected. The doctor told my wife when he finished he felt like he needed a drink.

I had to be put under general anesthetic. Two years ago, the doctor tried to use a local while I was awake but because of some previous operations there was too much scar tissue and it was beyond painful. He told me he had done several thousand of these and never experienced this. I felt that familiar wave of shame.

Shame around my junk.

My wife and I had been talking for years about me getting one. We both knew we didn’t want children and she’d like to go off the pill soon. But I still woke up this morning feeling a pang of sadness. It’s now official. I will never reproduce.

My problems with my junk started when my testicles didn’t descend like they’re supposed to and at ten and eleven I had operations to lower them.

I’m not sure if the procedure is any more kind than it was back then but they attached an elastic string to the testicle and the other end to a leg cast. I think Mengele invented it when he was in his bluegrass phase. It was painful and embarrassing but in hindsight really not the worst part of the whole experience.

I’ve written ad-nauseam about this, especially on previous blogs, and I kind of want to apologize because I’m afraid of looking weird or obsessive about these issues and memories, but I figure nobody is making you read this.

Some of my most painful scar tissue is the feeling of being helpless, exposed, prodded and abnormal; the doctor informing my mom nonchalantly that I will never have kids and her taking him out into the hallway to rip him a new asshole (I didn’t understand at the time why she was making such a big deal even though I felt a wave of shame when he said it, I mostly felt numb); the multiple doctor visits, laying completely naked (they didn’t offer me a gown) on the table while he handled my body like I was a piece of meat; the time he walked in with a half-dozen interns in tow and talked about my body like I was a defective freak and I tried not to cry; my mom passively letting this happen; me feeling myself leave my body;

I buried how I felt about that experience until two years ago. I suddenly realized how abandoned and unprotected I felt by my mom. What kind of a mother wouldn’t sense her son feeling cold, frightened, exposed? I felt the buried rage and sadness. Why didn’t my mom try to get something to cover me up? Why didn’t she say anything when the doctors came in with a herd of people without warning? Why she didn’t say anything afterwards, ask how I was? Hug me?

I have always felt invaded by my mother’s eyes; like she drinks me in. It’s like the doctor visits were the perfect opportunity for her to get what she wanted. I don’t know if this is the truth or not, but that’s how I feel and I know from years of therapy that it’s not about blame it’s about processing our experience. She never once asked me if I’d like some privacy. It was quite the opposite. I remember the few times I tried to cover myself up she chided me saying “it’s nothing I haven’t seen before” or “I saw it before you did”.

After the first failed vasectomy I decided, maybe I don’t even need one. Maybe that childhood doctor was right. I got a sperm motility test. For almost two years I avoided making the phone call to find out the results. I don’t know why. Maybe I was afraid of revisiting that feeling of shame when the doctor said I would be sterile. Clearly I was afraid of something. I finally called and because it had been so long I had to talk to about nine different people and leave multiple messages, feeling like even more of an oddity that I would wait so long.

The doctor informed me my sperm number is about a million. I was impressed. Then he said, that’s basically sterile, but there is still a remote possibility of getting my wife pregnant. A million sperm and those are the odds? Now I know how parents feel whose forty-five year-old still lives in the basement.

I think the emotional scar tissue is much worse than the physical.

When I had my testicles lowered I was terrified my classmates would find out. It didn’t even occur to me how shitty it was that my dad’s train home from work would pass right by a stop at the hospital and he didn’t visit. I remember pretending to be happy blowing out the candles on a birthday cake in the cafeteria and just feeling numb. I coped by going to a place in my head where I didn’t feel. I checked out. I disassociated from my body. I never once talked about what I was feeling. I was never asked. I buried it for the next forty years.

I have one fond memory of that time; a nurse from Philadelphia who would sing to me. She looked like Liza Minnelli. I liked her perfume. She would sweep into the room smiling and cracking jokes. I loved it. I felt like she was the one person who understood what I felt; who felt me. I didn’t feel uncomfortable being naked in front of her, because I felt like more than a body to her. To this day when I’m in the care of a compassionate nurse I want to ask them to hug me. I want to cry on their shoulder. Not because I’m still sad. I’m not sure why. Maybe because they feel like the mom I always wish I’d had and I know what a difference their kindness can make in someone who is feeling shame or fear. Like most childhood trauma it has also left me with sexual fantasies around nurses and being cared for. Yes, there are some videos online, most are terrible and miss the emotional point of the fantasy.

Back to my renegade testicles. I was told after one operation that I shouldn’t ride a bike for a while. I thought they meant peddling. They didn’t say it was because it was about avoiding sitting on the seat and having your legs hang down. I had my brother chauffer me on his bike, which was even worse and it screwed up the operation of one of my testicles, leaving it higher than the other. I was sure no woman would ever be able to overlook this. I now know, thanks to feedback from my wife and other women I’ve shared this information with they’re not big scrotum fans to begin with. Very few get the newsletter. Last year’s convention was cancelled.

Why am I sharing all this? I don’t know. Maybe I’m one of those people that have to share every personal detail of their life. Maybe I need to let this out. Maybe I want to know that other people have been through something similar or are working to overcome an adversarial relationship with their junk. I started the podcast to help other people feel less alone, but I didn’t write this to help other people. It didn’t even occur to me when I sat down (gently) to write this. That’s how “unique” I feel even though I know realize as I type this how crazy that is. I’ve read the body shame surveys on the website. But most of the self-hatred shared there has to do with feeling fat. Very few people share about their junk. I know there is an epidemic of girls growing up hating the size of the labia. I hate to say this but when I first heard of this it made me feel better. That’s so selfish but it made me feel less alone. I guess that’s how toxic body shame can be.

When I’m showering after a hockey game and I see guys with “normal” looking junk I think to myself “I wonder if they appreciate that?”

I’m normal sized when “in action” but not so impressive back at the barracks. In fact it looks like I’m in my bunk with the covers pulled over my head. Every time I get undressed after a game, there’s even more shrinkage and I’m reminded of all of this stuff. Almost like I’m waiting for someone to razz me. I know it’s crazy, but emotional scar tissue isn’t always based in reality. Lots of my teammates don’t shower. Maybe they’re dealing with shame too. I feel like my genitals are an annoying neighbor and neither of us are going to move.

So here I sit for about the sixth time (I also had two hernias and a benign tumor) looking like my groin was hit by a baseball bat.

I’m not sure what to write next. So I’ll wrap this up like it’s a documentary on A&E being voiced by Bill Curtis.

Scar tissue has been around since the dawn of man. It carries with it the reminder that life is inherently dangerous on this rocky planet. Much like the early cave drawings, they bear testament not only to where we’ve been…but what we’ve fought.