Fingertips gently trailing along my belly, eyes shining bright with anticipation. Lips slightly parted, his breath cools my blushing cheeks. Mouths caressing, teasing, tempting, longing. The scent of his shampoo, like a waterfall after a summer rain. Hearts beating out of sync, each one pounding out desire. He leaves me breathless and my body prickles from my head to my toes.
Some days, like yesterday and today, the words won’t come. I sit and stare at the blinking cursor and realize that my mind is completely blank. It’s not necessarily an unpleasant thing, my brain works overtime most of my days anyhow, but it’s still disconcerting. I flipped through pages and pages of the book I was reading and told myself “I want to write like this one day. One day I will.” Yet how can I when I give up so soon after having begun? Too many days I sit in front of blank pages and wait. Sometimes I just write whatever is in my head. More often than not I just don’t write. Some days I have too many words in my brain and they pour out onto the page. There’s times when I’ll nitpick at those words, although I try not to. Most times I tear the page out and crumble it up. Once again I find myself empty. Too often there’s a black void inside of me that can only be filled by creating something with words. My words. Yet too often, I cannot.
Because everything beautiful has to start somewhere. Uncultured, uncultivated, unpolished. In the rawest form, waiting to be sculpted. Created under intense heat and pressure, able to withstand. Strong. Incredibly strong. Glimmering, shining, twinkling, but nowhere near it’s full potential. Rough edges, a little dirty, a little murky. The beauty lies underneath, just waiting for the right hands to uncover it. Turn it in the light and see all of the colors within, a bit dull right now, but still displaying hints of beauty within beauty. Every angle showing something slightly different than the last. Causing awe and appreciation and sometimes envy, feel it captivate you as you gaze into the heart of it, trying to discover it’s secret.
I’ve huddled myself onto the bench in the kitchen to brood after having been snapped at. It wasn’t his fault though, he was only anxious about the weather alert in our area and how his parents will fare through it all. I envy the relationship he has with them, even though I cannot quite understand it. I’ve never been close to my family and I can’t say that it ever particularly bothered me, seeing how they never really belonged to me. Some ties are only as strong as the love that binds and them together and if there is no love, what’s left? I’m good at playing pretend though- pretend friend, pretend sister, pretend daughter, pretend wife. The only real things I have are my words and my love for my children seeing how I oftentimes find myself questioning love of any other type. I don’t think thirty-five years worth of experience in the subject is enough to call myself an expert. More likely, I’ve become a critic. Accidentally, of course. I’m stationed on this bench with the tears burning in my eyes, telling myself that it’s because while I may not be the best housewife, once I get started, I’m far from imperfect. You couldn’t tell this right now of course, what with the mess that’s been created between the girls and the puppy and I’m so exhausted. I feel the depression pulsating around me, just out of reach, threatening to bubble over and so I try to breathe and write. I’ve found myself here accidentally, of course, and so I’m trying to make the best of it until it’s time to move on.
In the darkness I watch the smoke curl, only it isn’t really smoking because I don’t smoke cigarettes anymore. Is it really drinking if the beer isn’t alcoholic? If it’s not, then I could use a drink. It’s been three years since I’ve had a drink. Three years? Or was it four? When my mind is like this I tend to forget.
I’ve been so excited staring at this new book I received on my doorstep today, I’ve taken it out of my handbag so many times already and stared at the cover, flipped through the pages and stared at the words without really seeing them. I don’t know where to begin, at the beginning is always best, I’m sure, but I’m afraid of tainting the pages.
I need to sleep, six a.m. comes so early and in Texas it’s nearly one a.m. yet here I am, listening to sleep music for puppies on YouTube while she paces in circles, whining because she wants to roam around the house. He says it’s because she’s at the age where she’s a teenager in puppy years and I think back to when I was a teenager and decide that I can relate. When I was her age, I always wanted to be anywhere but where I was.
I browsed through Amazon tonight and told myself that I am making it my mission to buy two more books of poetry by bloggers whose words I adore. I’ve never been too keen on ordering online but these words, I need them. I have yet to read anything in the book I received today, I have only held it and turned it this way and that, knowing that somewhere in between those covers will be words that make me cry. Not that I am afraid to cry and not that I will cry because I am sad. I cannot quite explain it. Opening up to that first page is a moment that I treasure and I am excited and anxious and perhaps not quite ready.
I am restless tonight and so is the puppy. She’s been whining off and on for the past hour and I’ve finally let her out of the bedroom so she can wander around. I wish sleep would come yet I am frustrated, angry, suspicious and I know that it will not. Tomorrow I’ll be most unpleasant and by Wednesday or Thursday, maybe not until Friday, I will feel terrible about my mood swings. But maybe it’s not all so bad because when I am feeling this way is usually when I’m the most productive with my writing.
Sometimes I sit and listen to the seconds tick by on my watch. I hold my pen in my hand and tell myself any second now I’ll write something. I’ll figure out how to write down what’s in my head without worrying about how it sounds. Tick, tick, tick. My watch mocks me and my heart clenches.
It makes me think of Captain Hook’s fear of clocks. This is who I’m becoming with every passing year. Most women my age associate clocks and ticking with their biological clocks, the time to have children slipping through their fingers. I associate mine with the amount of time that’s passing me by as well, but it’s time in which I should be writing something great and instead I’m writing this. It makes me wonder what will happen once the ticking stops.
I think about all the things I always said I would do: buy a rolltop desk and a typewriter. Sit at it with my lava lamp nearby and write my novels. Travel the world: Japan, Paris, Amsterdam, Australia. Maybe do some volunteer work, maybe learn how to sculpt pottery, maybe learn how to paint. Who knows, maybe I’m not destined to be the next award winning bestselling novelist, maybe I’m supposed to be the next Dali.
Whatever it is that I’m meant to do, I cannot see beyond these ticking second hands to figure it out. All I can hear, smell, taste, feel is the constant ticking. Tick, tick, tick, tick.
I told myself that I would write today, write something real. This is no different from any other day. I never even left the couch, except to make the Little People food and to use the restroom. Instead, I sat and stared at the laptop the Mister got me for my birthday a few weeks ago and told myself I would open the notepad and write something. And I did, open the notepad app, I mean.
I sat and stared at that blinking cursor for so long and waited for inspiration to hit as I told myself that I should just start typing and see where it took me. I thought about pulling out some paper and a pen and outlining a story but that hasn’t always worked out so well for me in the past. And so I began to read something else.
I envied the words I had read earlier and once again wished that I could write like that. I told myself that I would try, really try to write something, anything. And now I have a headache.
Every day that I don’t write something I see my dream of becoming a writer slowly slipping through my fingers. And it’s not that I don’t have the desire to write, it’s just that when I sit down, the words won’t come. Rows and rows of blank lines face me instead and I freeze in fear. I give up just as quickly as I started.
I opened this page instead and wrote about how I cannot write and I wonder how many more days will go by of me writing the same nonsense before I write something I am proud of.
I think she’s freaking out again.
Freaking out how?
Words I wasn’t meant to see. Words that cut through my heart. Words that stabbed me over and over and over and still do sometimes, like tonight. Words that were spoken over six months ago but that reverberate all throughout me at the most inconvenient times, like tonight. Words that break my heart into a thousand tiny pieces when I think about them.
I think she’s freaking out again.
Freaking out how?
I didn’t freak out. I’ve been through a lot. Things that would’ve landed most people in a mental institution or worse. I try so hard to keep it together, I spend fifty minutes once a week on a couch saying the same shit to the same woman for crying out loud. I’m trying.
I think she’s freaking out again.
Freaking out how?
My problem is that I don’t have a lot of trust in me. Trust. Such a fragile thing, such a scary thing to give away. I could freely give away any and everything else I own, every little possession, the clothes off my back, the money in my bank, but my heart and soul?? I save that for my blank books, my journals, strangers who read my words…
I think she’s freaking out again.
Freaking out how?
Sometimes this life is so hard. I try my best to make it through my days with positive thoughts, or thoughts positive enough. I try to keep at bay that darkness that lives deep within my every fiber, the darkness that’s always threatening to take over and change me completely. I try to remind myself of the truths. I try so hard to be a good person, a kind person, a loving and gentle person. A normal person. But damn, sometimes its so damn hard.
I think she’s freaking out again.
Freaking out how?
Can you blame me for having a hard time with relationships and friendships? I’ve been screwed over a lot in the past, really torn apart, and I carry those scars with me, sometimes I dig at them and tear them wide open again so they can bleed. So I’ll never forget. So I don’t find myself in the same situation ever again. Sometimes just because I miss the pain.
I think she’s freaking out again.
But hey, it could be worse right? At least I’m the type that withdraws instead of lashes out. At least I’m the type that cries in private, late at night when everyone else is asleep, I cry it out, or try to at least so I don’t hurt anyone else with my pain. At least I’m not the type to retaliate against those that my mind wrongly accuses of hurting me. At least I only tear at my own scabs and not everyone else’s.
I think she’s freaking out again.
I told myself I would write something down, something real. I told myself I would find some release. I jotted down some ideas for fiction that I could hide my true feelings behind but tonight, this just wouldn’t do. And not just tonight, most nights. It’s why I stay away from my own blog, its why I search through the words of every other blogger that I follow. Trying to find my own thoughts and feelings mirrored in someone else’s words.
Sometimes I think I’ve found that one person, the one whose mind is much like my own, but it never turns out to be anything true, anything real. It’s never real.
I am not like anyone else I know, yet I am so much like so many others I know. I am everyone and no one in the faces and lives of everyone I meet. I am here but not there, I’m everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. It’s such a lonely life, a life I only have the desire to fill with words.
As I was sitting in my car this afternoon, waiting to pick the Girls up from school as I do every day at the same time, I once again told myself I was going to write something. Something I can be proud of. I thought of all of the writers, bloggers as well as novelists, hell, even Indie writers- that I admire so much for writing, for beginning something and finishing it, no matter the quality. Once again I told myself, I’m going to do THAT. I will.
How many years in a row have I told myself this? 27, that’s how many. TWENTY-SEVEN. And still I have nothing to show for it except for a ton of blog posts, a few pieces of flash fiction and more half-finished stories than I can count. Stories that make me cringe when I read back over them.
Not all of my words make me do this. Sometimes I read back over my blog posts and think to myself, “That was kinda pretty. It made my eyes do something weird, made them kinda damp (I don’t cry so damp is the best adjective I could think of to describe the function…) It didn’t totally suck…” There’s more times than not that I read over my past pieces of writing and think to myself, “What the hell was I thinking?? What did those words even mean??”
But through writing is the only way I know how to. How to anything. When I’m angry? I write a bloody story, violent words with gory imagery- things I usually shred afterwards because I always have an irrational fear that my words will somehow be brought to life and because I wrote them to life somehow, I’ll end up being the guilty one, no matter that more than likely I will be innocent. When I’m sad? I’ve started writing things that might be considered poetry but that I don’t know if I could actually categorize as poetry because I’ve never really seen myself as any kind of poet, as much as I would love to be. When I’m afraid my writings come out more as ramblings. Long, drawn out posts about the neverending lists of what if’s that I’m so good at conjuring up every second of ny existence. Writing is the only way I can communicate.
Too often I find myself at a loss for spoken words. I can never quite find the ones most appropriate for the situation, the occasion, the moment. I open my mouth and the most ridiculous nonsense comes out- nonsense that not even I would buy if I heard it spoken from the mouth of another. It’s embarrassing really. But when I write, it’s not this way. When I start to pour the words out onto paper, tap them out onto the screen, they come out exactly the way I meant for them too, even if they don’t come out the way I meant them to at all.
When I write, it’s the only time I am. It’s the only time I am anything. When I write, it’s the only time I am at peace. I can let go of it all, all the crap that I carry around day in and day out- the crap I have carried around for so long, my whole life. When I write, it’s the only time I am free. I can create a world all my own, my own design with my own laws and rules, my own scenery, my own anything and everything. It’s all mine.
When I write, it’s the only time I am at peace. It’s how I let go of the pain, the frustration, the negtivity. It’s how I start to heal. It’s how I make myself whole again.
One day, I’ll write something wonderful. Every day, I try to write something honest, something beautiful. One day, I’ll write something that’s wonderfully, beautifully honest. And until then, I’ll simply keep writing. 💖
Write On 