The Mighty Pen

I am feeling so snap-crackle-poppishly full of epiphanies. I’m not sure where to start.

First, I felt reminded today that I HAVE to write. I’m having a surge of renewal of that truth today. What IS that? I actually don’t quite know. I have never quite known, but I do know that it is a strange sort of compulsion. Maybe we all have our compulsions, some worse than this one. I don’t know. I do know that nothing is ever real for me until I write it down. Nothing happens to me that goes unexamined by my pen. And I can’t think freely until I empty the noise from me with writing...just as it is with the Burning Ritual. I have to release my thoughts onto paper sometimes, even if they are temporary. Even if they are a tiny glimpse into my mind on the hop. I may totally disagree tomorrow, but here is where I am right smack now.

Sean and I were talking tonight about the concept of addiction. The only addition I can be certain of in my life is an addiction to writing. I am paralyzed without it. I am the girl laying in gray pajamas under dirty bedsheets watching the world with plaintive violin music in the background. It’s a dark place, and I’ve been there. But I learned that I have the power to draw myself out of that dark place, no matter how you got there, and that it was no one else's job to do it for you. You are built of the strong stuff. I sometimes regret the ease of my daughters' childhoods, because how am I ever to teach that to them? How do they learn fortitude?

I have more to say on that topic, but it's a subject for another day. For now, back to writing. Why I need it. I know it’s because it’s how I sorted through so much as a child. I am a very resilient person. Shit happened to me, the kinds of stuff they write self-help books to give you coping skill for. But I listened to my mother. “You gotta be hearty. A lot can happen to a body in this world. You gotta be hearty.” If I have inheirited any of that grit, I am profoundly grateful. If I have honed any of it in my life, practiced it, it’s only been because I could write my way from one end of it to the other.

I’m not alone. I’m not unique. Everyone has shit happen to them, and so very many of them way worse than me. But I am sensitive. And the big things that happened were deeply formulative then, as the big things that happen now continually shape who I am becoming. I live an overexamined life now. Imagine how deeply I studied my journey back then, when journaling, and listening to original cast Broadway albums, were really all I had to do.

This blog is very exhilarating for me. I don’t know exactly who is reading it, and I don’t need you to tell me if you don’t want to. But every once in a while, particularly recently, I’ve encountered people who confess to me, somewhat sheepishly, “I read your blog.” I swear, you couldn’t give me a more meaningful compliment. It’s wrapped in sparkly tissue and smells like those cinnamon pine cones at the Christmas Tree Shop. I have so often wondered if what is in my head is remotely worth reading to anyone else. It’s so worth it to me just to say it, but I wonder if it’s worth anyone’s nine minutes every few days. I just know that it’s loosening things up in me, and giving me confidence and enthusiasm and energy and propulsion. That’s a very high-energy-vibration way to be.

I like it here. Thanks for hanging with me. I would totally mix you a Fauxmopolitan if I could.