It’s been too long since I’ve written regularly. But how could I bring myself to force it, on the nights I felt lost and words wouldn’t come?
When the lifeblood runs thin, when the heart hardens and cracks, trying to stir it again can only be painful. Right?
But there lies the larger problem, the curse of ignorance. Will this hurt or will this help? What is happening to me to make me feel this way? Should I embrace it or reject it; where is the line that defines me, what exactly am I trying to save?
I do the best I can, and I suppose that’s all we can really do. But it seemed right to take a moment to acknowledge the ever-present possibility, so often ignored, of just getting it completely fucking wrong.
Something is missing, you understand. I’ve gotten better at waiting, passed much of the fear and grief and doubt that inevitably comes from really trying to get to know yourself. Am I this kind of person, is that okay? Is there something wrong with me, for not wanting this or wanting this? Can I really do this, is there really a future for me? Do I have to pretend to be this other person to be happy?
No, I’m glad to have survived that, though truth be told I doubt such questions ever completely disappear. But I’ve made my peace, for now. Now, it’s as though a fog has lifted and instead of crushing darkness I’m instead greeted with an overwhelming sense of uncertainty. That sense of waking up alone and realizing for the first time how unfamiliar your life has become. All because of you, I believe in angels, not the kind with wings, no, not the kind with halos - the kind that lead you home, when home becomes a strange place; Rise Against - The Good Left Undone. But, you know, without an angel in sight.
Except it’s not your home, your surroundings, not anything separate you can readily change. It’s you. And there’s no one to ask for directions, no one to show you the sights or explain what the fuck is on. Just you, alone inside yourself.
And I want to explore, I want to find my way through. I want to see the truth of what’s inside me, even when it seems ugly or it hurts. I want to become myself by understanding myself.
But it’s such a deep, dark rabbit hole.
I still have to wake up and go to work in the morning. I still have to be able to function in a world outside myself. So there’s only so far I can go, only so much I can bear before I have to close my eyes and pretend it all away.
But some doors, once open, won’t close again. Sometimes the direction of change can only go one way.
It’s hard, to explain and feel. And I don’t know what to say about how I feel, because if I did I wouldn’t need this, wouldn’t need the process of writing, because the words would already be there and wouldn’t need to be drawn forth.
It’s so easy to forget, to place the world of clear sensations, of images and tastes and sounds in front of that other one. The one that stands behind. I still have to eat. A car alarm outside can startle me out of a reverie or deep sleep. Words carve themselves so clearly from the blankness of a page or screen.
But I don’t feel these things, not really. I am aware of them, but I don’t feel them. What I feel are the things that stand behind them. And so in forgetting…
It hurts. It hurts because these things matter, and I don’t know how to hold on to them. I don’t know what it is I really need because it all dances behind another world which I cannot ignore. I catch a glimpse in dreams and wake up disoriented with no idea how to bring the two things together.
I can’t hear her voice or see her voice or spell her name, but in a memory she took my hand, or she stepped back. Our lips met, and something moved between us. I could feel the weight behind her eyes but with no clue as to their color.
How do you survive dreams like that? I come back changed, though the world is not. And in the difference between us, I burn.
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