"Metanoia"

Madman in the Attic had become too too tongue-in-cheek for me; a bit on the nose, a bit unhelpful, a bit of a joke that didn't work anymore. I just discovered a new word, Metanoia. It's Jung, so its actual psychological significance or reality can be taken with a side of salt: a moment of re-thinking the world, of re-structuring the universe around a realisation, an epiphany: it is the category to which both 'psychotic breakdown' and 'healing' belong. That ambiguity is beautiful. It is "a spontaneous attempt of the psyche to heal itself of unbearable conflict by melting down and then being reborn in a more adaptive form", cf. Wikipedia. Been there, done that. And what a lovely spin, too: a more adaptive form.

Yes. There is something I agree with there. I do feel stronger, better. Recovered, but not like bones that recover more frail. More like steel, reinforced with steel, molten steel poured over, hardened into some enormous obelisk; the original thoughts, the original feelings, the original loves and losses are someone else's. They belonged to the old particles of steel, which dripped off as I was growing, becoming, strengthening. My self-image reduced to coal, the chipping forces made me crack; more pressure, and heat, and agony, and on the other side I changed, into diamond. As if coal I had had been my chrysalis; I had span it around me with negative thinking, poor decisions, and antidepressants had been the steroid, and my carbon-and-sulfur silk-web spilling too fast to catch; time was all it took for the Adult to emerge.

Metanoia, n.

It contains 'annoy'; that's cheeky, I feel, the right amount of on the nose. It contains 'meta', and look, look at the absurdity of a blog discussing why I chose the name for a blog only I read (properly), half-aware to Watch What I Say while Saying What I Feel. (The same time knowing it's slightly ironic, because I'm fudging this exposition to fit a very loose definition of 'meta', because I feel I have to. ) And it has these other fitting meanings, too: it is the retorical device of retracting what you just said and saying it again in a better way. What I mean by this is, it is the style of self-correction, that lends itself freely to streams-of-conscious, blog-blank-type, etc. What I mean by this is, it is my style. What I mean by this is... [joke not funny anymore]. In theology, 'metanoia' is repentance.

My blog has, stylistically, always been dependent on epiphanic elevated journals, taking real things and lifting them into the pure abstract, heightening things into pure fiction. Now it is named for being so. And it has always been a (more carefully constructed than it might appear) intentionally long-winded, winding, self-correcting and confusing style at once meant to seem instantaneously written but encoding more interesting truths all the same. Like the "Birds" poem (blog down), which is all about renewal and a desperate attempt to find happiness (pre- or mid-SSRI detox), which was a false start perhaps, this blog signals a positive-outlook way forwards. For one thing, depressing blogs don't get you second dates, and they seem to over-worry College.

I am torn whether to quote from Kanye's "Stronger" or Wordsworth's "Prelude", so I'll quote neither. Onwards!