I have been wishing for a long time that I could find the time and energy to write more. Now, I understand that everyone (and their mother) has a blog, and why would mine be any different? It was when (this week) I realized that I did not have to have it be different, just real, that the title, and the time, and the energy mystically appeared.
I have been journaling for years. For those that don't know what journaling is, it is like blogging, but with a pen, and paper. Some may remember it as writing in a diary, or keeping a slam book, or, for the visually inspired, a scrapbook with captions and quotations and little thought bubbles. Me? I just had a spiral bound notebook, and a really good pen, and some spare time every day. And by every day, I really mean whenever-the-hell-I-felt-like-it. Sometimes that was all day on a Sunday. Sometimes it was on the third full moon of the month. It didn't matter, just that I would write. A few months ago, the writing was just not enough anymore. It was not enough of a catharsis to have any impact. It had become routine. It was a "Dear Diary", except I knew no one was listening. I wasn't even listening anymore. The words were cold. I was hiding.
So I put myself out there. I wrote a "note" for facebook, published it to a group, and sat back, crying and shaking and terrified and embarrassed and excited, and in more pain than I thought I could bear. I got exactly what I needed. Someone read it. It was not the who, or whether or not that person commented (they did, but that is not the point). It was that I transported myself outside the realm of wishing, and into the scary world of feeling. I existed.
I haven't been truly letting myself feel things for long time. Ten plus years by my calculations, about the time that Seth died. And by now, I have gotten really good at keeping going, and putting my emotions in a little box to be dealt with later. I was really good at doing that as a child, and it just kept me safe and sane into my adult hood. I would write everything down in whatever journal I keeping at the time, and then never read it, never acknowledge it, never think about it again. I had dealt with it and that was that.
So why now? Why write a blog, and post it where the world can read it? (Ok, I am not vain enough to believe the world is reading it, and will be grateful if my best friend reads it, but you get the gist.) My reasons seem tied up in allowing myself to remember that I exist. I had been told for a long time that my existence in this world was dependent on the size of my body, the cleanliness of my house, the amount of money I brought in, the happiness I publicly displayed even when I was in a total state of panic and grief on the inside. I can't try to fake it any more. I can't drag myself along, not even knowing what happy is, and settling for less than feeling everything.
I will write. I will write here. I won't edit beyond grammar and spelling. I will scare myself. I will revel in fear and praise. I will find gratitude and anger in the silence. I will exist. Along that way, I will learn to let go. I will remember that letting go of bad stuff does not make the good stuff go away. No babies with bathwater. I will remember that wishes are a good thing. Working towards the wishes is even better.
