I’m waiting for ignition, I’m looking for a spark

They say there is a novel inside everyone. I think there are hundreds of stories inside of me. They live under my skin; squirm and multiply in the dark recesses of my mind. I wish I could get them out of my head and onto paper in a manner that didn’t seem, afterwards, to be crap. I suppose my greatest enemy here is doubt. Self-doubt and a deep seated belief that I’m not really that good at much. Even with the evidence (hello acceptance to the Master’s Program I wanted at the school I wanted) staring me in the face.

I haven’t written anything in months.

Lie.

I’ve written a long letter, or two and not sent them.

I’ve thought a lot about what I should write.

I need to write about a few things, work out my inner workings first before I can pour this novel out onto paper, from formless shapes and feelings in my gut into real living scenes on the page. My life feels like a template, a storyboard or even a metaphor for something better. Maybe that’s wishful thinking?

I was sorting through my reams of crap this weekend. I have so much of it… but I found one of the last birthday cards that Dean sent to me. I haven’t been able to put it down and it’s sitting in my purse at this very moment. It seems kind of silly that I’m so attached to this piece of paper that I’ve not seen in a couple of years, but it’s become a kind of symbol. It was when he was strong enough to remember, to care. I know it was him because he was the only one who signed it. There was no one to prompt him to send me a card, he just remembered me and sent it to remind me that he loved me on my birthday. It’s things like this that make me wonder if I did enough. I torture myself that I could have done more to help him get back to his old self. I guess I feel like I failed him. I never seem to be where I am needed most.

I never seem to be able to think outside the box when I need to; to step outside of myself and see beyond the immediate. Why is that?

Why?

Listening to: I have the Touch - Peter Gabriel

Posted in journal | No Comments » | Tags: anatomy of pain, family, inspiration, moving, rambling, woosh

take the splinters out of your eyes

Power.

It took me a long time to grasp the notion that power comes from me. Let me rephrase. Other people only have power over me if I let them, and vice versa. Of course knowing this and using it are two totally different things.

It has also become equally apparent that I am susceptible to my low self esteem. I have an overwhelming, if not pathological need to be liked and have behaved in a manner one might call chameleonic to achieve this. The last ten years I’ve seen myself get better with this behaviour - as in I’m not as likely to do it, but there are times where I simply do not feel worth attention and I tend to isolate myself instead when I feel like that. So I create this circle of depression that I don’t quite know how to fix. However, they say that knowing is half the battle and I suppose that coming to terms with these facts - as tough as that is, is part of that.

I need to know where this lack originated. My mother’s experiences with uncovering key events in her childhood has made me curious about the things that happened in my past. I don’t recall a lot of my childhood and I don’t know if there are things I’m missing or if I have blocked them on purpose. Soul searching ensues.

Recently, all this came into play. I suppose I felt particularly vulnerable because I was stressing out, because J and I were falling into old patterns, because… it was so easy to rekindle old feelings that I let it go farther than it should have.

The road to hell, as they say.

listening to: Kosheen - Recovery
reading: Abundance - Sena Jeter Naslund

Posted in fiction maybe, journal | No Comments » | Tags: anatomy of pain, oh smeg, power politics

Protected: digging a hole too deep to fill…

Posted in journal | Enter your password to view comments | Tags: Add new tag, anatomy of pain, nescience, obsessobsessobsess, philosophy, the road less travelled

there’s a space where you used to sit

Happy Birthday Dean-O. I miss you. We miss you.

Posted in journal | No Comments » | Tags: anatomy of pain, grief, just maybe, letters, small things

stepping on a carpet of glass…

A migraine is like sheet lightening accompanied by a monstrous thunder. An aurora borealis pulsing with my heartbeat on the edges of my vision. Usually this crystalline halo is all I have to worry about, the thunder of pain is distant; an echo somewhere in the recesses of my head. It is never the same. An ice lance pulsing behind my eyes, or an army of fireants tromping over my scalp, making each individual hair follicle a focal point of fire. Or perhaps the deep resonant throb of taiko drums at the base of my skull, or elephantine tap dancers in my forehead, right behind my eyes.

Thankfully my threshold is high, so it’s rarely that this cacaphony of light and pain overwhelms me. For those who deal with these more often than I do: May the fireants sting the tap dancing elephants to oblivion and the halo be washed away by rain.

listening to Recovery - Kosheen

Posted in journal | No Comments » | Tags: anatomy of pain, life, my brain