Wish

It’s one of those days when my anxiety is high. Everything annoys me and all I want is to lay in bed, in the dark, where it’s quiet and cool. I cringed through so many uncomfortably pointless conversations and was thankful that a supervisor that dislikes me has been promoted and will soon be leaving the store I work in. I haven’t shared this thought of mine with anyone, she’s extremely liked by everyone. Everyone but me. I had the misfortune of seeing the crazy side of her once and it was immediately apparent to me that her individual type of crazy absolutely did not mesh well with mine. I imagine she devours innocent kittens as snacks and then smears herself in honey or something equally unappealing while watching surgery shows on the discovery channel, practicing later on frogs she’s caught in swamps or whatever type of nature she likes to prowl in. Horribly mean of me, I know, but ask me if I care.

After a lovely Mother’s Day, my house is a mess, mostly because of the puppy, and I am exhausted. My body and soul yearns to lay in bed and read and then pull out my journal and write words that I don’t ever intend to share. But what’s the purpose of words if not to share them? I’ll probably sit on the couch and mope until it’s time to make dinner. Can’t very well be productive when the Mister isn’t home, the rambunctious, if not somewhat temperamental puppy won’t allow it. When she gets like this I get started down that path where I start to think that I am an inadequate mother who cannot even get a puppy to listen to her and that I have no business raising human children. My thoughts escalate quickly.

I’ve tried to absorb myself in made-up words and it helps for a little while, but not nearly long enough before I am dragged back into the pits of reality. I keep searching for something real and wish that things would just fall into place. Quite selfish of me, I know. I’m old enough to understand that wonderful things only come to those who work hard for it but maybe I’m jaded when I think of all of the years I worked hard and things only seemed to get worse and worse.

I have dreams just like everyone else but until I’m able to work seriously towards achieving these I’m just another person taking up space. I eat and drink the same things every day, I say the same words over and over, I think the same thoughts and feel the same feelings, all the while telling myself that there has to be more to this life and that one day, not now but one day, I’ll reach out and grasp it all in my closed fists the way I always used to wish I could capture the stars in the sky and place them in a glass jar, like fireflies. Until then, all I really have the energy to do is exist.

 

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The Long Road

I told myself I would become better at writing those thoughts down. I told myself I would start today. I sat in my car while waiting to pick up the Girls and I tried, I really tried. I wrote out a few lines and was immediately repulsed by them, I can’t even say disappointed, it was more a type of disgust. I’m not being too hard on myself, maybe my brain is too full.

I thought of the kind words said to me in my last post and I wondered if I was ever really meant to write. I’ve always told myself that people are instilled with passions for a reason but as usual, I found myself doubting my own.

I thought about my third grade teacher, as silly as that sounds, and how she was the one who sparked my passion for words- all with an assignment for our class to make our own books. We used cardboard for the covers and hot glued our choice of fabric to it. Then we sewed our choice of pages inside. Maybe we did this before we glued our covers on. We must have but that was a long time ago and my memory is already pretty crummy at times.

I was so proud of my efforts at making my very own book but staying true to myself, i had no idea what words I would write on those blank pages. I think this is when my fear of blank pages was born. There were only six, maybe it was eight, but that little cardboard, fabric-covered book terrified me. I couldn’t even tell you what I wrote in it. I doubt I even wrote anything at all.

I always have the greatest desire to create something, to write my own words and see them in front of me, but those damned blank lines- there’s not much else in the world that grips my heart in terror quite as much as those blank lines do.

I’m sure I started writing because the books I loved so much as a child allowed me to travel so far away from the disappointing life I lived. The older I got I wrote because I felt that no one understood me, I had no one to talk to. These days the same is still true, I am alone so often, even if it is not physically alone. It’s not as bad as it used to be, I think those magical pills the doctor prescribed me four months ago have helped, but from time to time those blank lines are all that I have. I stare at them and imagine the possibilities and terrify myself into believing that this is all that they’ll ever be- blank lines.

And even with those thoughts, I don’t give up. Not quite yet anyways. So long as even one person reads my words I can convince myself that they mean something to someone other than me, that even only one other person in the world understands what I’m trying to say, and that’s why I started writing in the first place. That’s why I’ll continue on. Maybe I expected the journey to be an easy one, and even though I have more days than not when I feel like laying down my pen for good, I’ll stay on the path I fell in love with so many years ago.

Scrawled With Love: March 14, 2017

Dear Friend,

I’ve thought about you for many days in a row now. I kept telling myself that I would sit down and write you out a quick note, just a small “Hey, hi, hello” to remind you that you are always in my thoughts, but I never quite got around to it. The timing just never seemed right. This is what I told myself anyways.

The more I thought about it, the more I told myself that the thought of sending you mail, a note from a stranger to another stranger, was absolutely absurd. I wondered if it would seem peculiar to you that I would think of you fondly enough to pick out a cute, humourous, touching card and scribble out a few lines. Would you find it awkward that I included some childish stickers inside? We hardly know each other, but your words have come to find such a special place in my life. But would this be enough to justify some Love Mail? I worried that it wouldn’t, so I refrained.

Sometimes things happen during my day and I want to share them with you, but not on a page of my blog where hundreds of other eyes skim over my words. I want to know about your day as well, what you’ve been up to, what made you smile, laugh, cry, worry, ache. I want to snuggle up in my bed, warm and safe underneath the covers and read your words. I want to have a special place and time where all I do is read your words. It would be my safe place.

That’s what your words do. They make me feel safe. They allow me to experience joy, sorrow, worry, anxiety, triumph, admiration, happiness- I experience so much through your words, in the privacy of my safe place, privately. I would much rather be there with you, as a friend, and hold your hand throughout your journey, but I know this isn’t possible. So I walk next to you, through your words. A million miles away, but near you nonetheless.

Sometimes I want to send you some things that I like, to remind you of me, remind you that I am thinking of you. Maybe a tin of my favorite tea, something that you collect that popped out to me the last time I ran to the store to pick up milk and eggs, a quilt you could wrap yourself in on the couch when the days just become to be too much. But my anxiety always stops me. How am I supposed to know what would be out of your comfort zone, and if I asked you, how could I trust that you weren’t just agreeing to appease me? And so I just don’t send anything at all.

But there always comes a time later on, when I realize that I should’ve trusted my big heart. I should’ve sent that card, that note, that care package. I should’ve reached out and reminded you that you are loved, even when in reality we hardly know each other. For now, I will turn to these pages to remind you.

You are loved. 💖

Routines

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.

 

World of Words

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.

These 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. 💖

Between the Two

I’m not sure what’s worse:

Being loved by someone for all the wrong reasons

Or

Being loved by someone who believes you love them for all the wrong reasons.

At Rest

There’s such perfection in his imperfection, the way he repeats himself when he’s really excited, but remembering every word he said and reciting it completely, not adding, not omitting, making it just as precise the second time around.

I love the way his mind won’t sit still; it’s the same as my wandering spirit, always fighting with every other part of us to work together, all the while wanting, needing, aching to move. Not because we aren’t happy where we are, we have different reasons for our need to move around, but the urge is still there, deep inside us, like electricity running through our every fiber.

There’s always a song in our hearts, never the same one as in the other’s but it’s music all the same. Sometimes he taps his finger or wiggles his foot in tune with a melody that only he can hear. My craving for music can only be soothed by putting on my headphones and letting the chords take me far away because in music I feel no pain, even when it reminds me of the past. It’s like watching a slide show, images that were and that will never be again. Images that cannot hurt me.

He always leaves his clothes exactly where he took them off, his boots are the same. I shove my dirty clothing into nooks and crannies because our laundry basket is full of my journals, all of them with a dozen or more pages torn out, words that could never quite express me perfectly. Sometimes I fold my tank tops up and put them back into my drawers, but I always smell them and decide they don’t smell clean, even if I’ve washed them six times since the last time I wore them. He throws his work shirts at the end of our bed at the end of a long day and by Saturday he is sniffing, the same as me.

Sometimes I get cravings for specific foods and nothing and everything else I eat is just as good, just as satisfying. My mind won’t let me forget these treats until I seem to be passing twelve gas stations on my way to everywhere and nowhere and I have to, HAVE TO, stop in and get whatever it is. He stashes his snacks on the floor next to his side of the bed, he’s very much more adventurous when it comes to food than I am and he comes home with the most exotic sounding foods, things I’ve never heard of. He doesn’t usually finish these snacks, sometimes he admits that they looked and sounded better than they actually tasted but he lived in the moment for that one moment while he was choosing it and while that may not seem monumental, truly it is.

Sometimes I think that I am unlovable because my mind it moves too quickly, it’s too negative, it’s been beaten and bent and broken and bruised, the same as my heart. He never gives up on trying to show me that not everyone is the same and that some hands are delicate with such fragile things, some touches are light and tender. And when my mind won’t stop moving, when his mind won’t stop moving and when his body yearns to move and my spirit wants to break free, in those moments when we are next to each other he reaches out and touches me and we are both still.