The other day I could not bring myself to write. Oh, I tried and words did materialize on the screen before me, but they were hollow and began to bore and frustrate me inside of a few minutes.
However, I know that the writing itself is not the issue because I live, love and process the world through words and language.
Writing subjectively about myself, my thoughts and my slice of the macrocosm is not the issue because that is how I process the world; and having the opportunity to do so in a forum that forces my scattered mind to adhere to a contained structure only benefits the operation of writing and the process of processing.
Writing while suffering through difficult or challenging times is not the problem because; as I said, writing is how I parse the garbled, visceral language of being human that we all engage in every waking moment of every day, and I untangle it with serious reflection one word at a time on the page.
I've been experiencing a fairly moderate wave of difficult lessons over the past decade or so, and within the past four years they have escalated in intensity. As with most life lessons, they almost invariably involve other people even in the case of a natural disaster or house fire; which, fortunately, I have never yet suffered through. We don't live alone here no matter how much we may some days wish it so, and our responsibility to honor and respect the privacy and feelings of the people placed in our lives seldom waivers.
And so, my dilemma has become one of candor. How much is too much, and if I choose to remain vague, pithy and loose; at what point do I then become disingenuous? At what point in my attempts to circumnavigate and reframe the bold truth to both protect myself and others do I begin sounding like a used car salesman or a script writer for shows on The Hallmark Channel?
I had to ask myself these questions the other day because I still really wanted to write, yet I felt stymied by propriety and convention and terrified at what the next step would have to be if I really wanted a solution to the problem.
My reserve of and interest in writing generalized, fluffy, anecdotal vignettes is neither deep nor compelling and for as many humorously disturbing childhood traumas, over-wrought poems or encounters with myself in the shower, there simply isn't enough drive in this mid-twentieth century-born female model to spend endless hours tooling down a road of lame dead ends and 'One-way-only' signs.
Face it. My life is more than half over. Why would I want to spend the latter parcel of the earthbound experience channeling earlier versions of myself? It sort of gives a whole other layering to the "been there and done that" frame of reference. Time, illusion though it may be according to all the best scientific and spiritual minds in the world, is moving on and running out. Meanwhile, I am just getting warmed up.
This results in an odd paradox: Here you have a woman with a significant amount of life experience behind her, lots of energy, a boatload of curiosity, an ocean of observations, ideas and opinions; and someone who has arrived at a point in life where she has neither the time nor the desire to beat around the mulberry bush on this cold and frosty, midlife morning!
That leaves me right here on the literary precipice of deep-soul space knowing that what is required of me if I am to remain loyal to my heart and the prodding of my spirit, is to be unabashedly honest as I probe, purge and parse the gritty, grainy edges of the experiences I encounter and the people I engage.
Being a Libra sun and a person seemingly inscribed with a DNA that compels me to please everyone and maintain a healthy balance in all my interpersonal relationships, as well as a flawless complexion; it comes as no surprise that I find this next level of commitment to be a daunting and terrifying one.
It is not that I am afraid I won't be able to adequately articulate and express those deeper layers of honesty. It is that I will.
At this point I've had enough experiences to know that often when you step into yourself with full authenticity and speak what you know from the bottom of your soul to be the truth as you observe and interpret it, you stand a better than ninety percent chance of pissing somebody off.
Being the Libran version of a human doormat - which is basically a clean, well-groomed, artistically-inclined person who sports a perpetual smile even as the boot soles are lathering her with mud and who will then, still smiling, make excuses for having been so violated yet be totally shocked when the same mud-scraping repeatedly occurs - it took me an unnaturally long time to grow a backbone and both stand up for and defend myself. In fact, it has been only as recent as within the past five years, so you could say I'm still a novice. But the good news is that my backbone is new and strong and eager for exercise, which ought to be right now supplying my heart with courage.
Ummmm......well, I'm still waiting, so it could be that there is some form of blockage or perhaps I haven't had enough glasses of water today. I think I slept alright, so that couldn't be it.
Oh well, while I'm waiting for that courage to inform my heart that we are hooked in, online and ready to roll, I guess I'll just post this blog and give it another twenty-four hours. I am older now, you know. My brain and body don't seem to be quite as quick on the uptake as they once were. Gimme a break......
