THE GOBLIN NEWSLETTER 67

I used to view negative emotions as something that got in the way of life. This was such an obviously wrong & childish way of thinking. Negative emotions are an enormous part of life. They are teachers. It was the things that created the negative emotions in me that I saw as getting in my way. These things like my parents getting a divorce, kids at school not understanding me, not being as good at things as I wanted to be, my fear of heights, the fumes from the toxic culture that everything exuded in the 80s. These constant happenings built up these negative emotions, but these things also taught me the lessons, toughened me up, they shouldn’t have been avoided. Now, because of the stroke I am forced to feel these emotions immediately, I have no option of bottling them up, they just come spilling out. It took me a while to get used to this, but I feel pretty accepting of it at this point. Even before the stroke I was beginning to understand that art is about evoking emotions & that’s why people remember it. This is like suddenly realizing that roses smell really good, “But I just liked the colors, I didn’t realize that they smelled amazing too!” I didn’t care about plot in movies, lyrics in songs, etc. This all helped me develop my aesthetic senses but I lacked tremendously the ability to see these things that most people respond to. It’s weird, it’s like I was autistic for the early part of my life, but I have no autistic traits at this point. This decision to learn from obstacles instead of fearing them as potential creators of negative emotions has been tremendous for me. This view of obstacles in this way has only increased. I used to see them as walls I had to destroy or go around & now I see them as puzzles to solve. Frequently, because I didn’t see these obstacles as puzzles, I couldn’t destroy or get around them & they would alter my course.