Boy am I full. This year Yours Truly and Hambone flew down to Atlanta to see the new kid in the family. I'm an uncle now, and got my first look and chance to hold the baby yesterday. EAB looks like her father, Monkeyboy, and is undoubtedly the center of attention. You can see pictures of her at her mother's blog.

I had a meltdown a week and a half ago. We went to a friend's b-day party, and I got hammered. We came home, and I was sick almost immediately. It was one of those sicks, though, that makes you feel torn up emotionally too. Nothing quite like being the blubbering drunk. Shel asked me, "Are you sad?" And I answered truthfully, actually: "How can I not be? I live in a world where there is no god."

You'd think that that sort of thing wears off with the booze, but instead, it unlocked something, and it wrecked me for several days. Gentle Reader, if you are one of those who know me well, and have known me for a long time, you will know that I generally don't cry. About anything. Ever. Sure, I whine and moan, and complain about virtually everything; but I don't lose it, folks.

I lost it that day, like I haven't done for eleven years. Something welled up inside of me, and I realized that I'm pretty much at the end of my rope when it comes to managing my spiritual shipwreck. I've been holding myself together with duct tape and baling wire since the term that I taught that link course, and I'm burnt up.

Shel has a fabulous counselor, whom I went to see this past Monday. I started talking about spiritual stuff as what set some of this off, and explained a few of the past episodes in my life. I also explained what happened in the hours and days after that guy's birthday party. I told DC (as I will henceforward reference him) that I was at the end of managing it, that I was able to put on a good face, but that I wasn't all there.

He then said, "well, while you were talking I took a few notes. I wrote here, 'strong separation between rational and emotional selves.'" Let me tell you, folks, that hit home. He continued:

"The rational side of you knows that there is no god."

"Yes." (To be honest, I was relieved to finally say it out loud.)

"But the emotional and spiritual part of you won't accept it. Why not?"

That, I had no answer for.

In fact, Gentle Reader, I've been mulling over his words for the last few days now, and everywhere I look inside me I see evidence of that schism between the rational and the emotional. And the more I look, the more I see evidence of how much I hate my emotional self. I contain it, I sequester it, I put it in a vault when I can. It represents the stupid Randall, the trusting Randall, the guileless Randall, the goofy kid with buckteeth. That Randall extends his hand and gets it burned.

And so I hate it and hide it, I guess. I try to lose it.

The upshot is that I have cauterized the part of me that can offer love. What I call love now often seems like an act of the will, or affection, or fun. But where is my heart?

I think that's the expedition I'm embarking on with DC: to find and reclaim it.