Ugly

Sunday, October 5, 2008

I don't know if I've ever felt I needed to write as much as I do right now. I've been feeling that way for days. It's not words in me, but thoughts and feelings crashing against one another like the wrestling of waves. There's been this feeling, or a hope at least, that there would be a quieting in the laying of words, the stringing of letter and punctuation.

I don't know. I am lost and have been for a while.

I saw a movie recently in which he said, "If you do this you will be lost forever," I guess implying that if we do bad things we lose ourselves. I think sometimes it has become hard for me to know the difference between being the doer and the receiver of bad things. After a while, the feeling is the same. Lost. You don't remember where your heart lives and your organs are buoyed up somewhere around your shoulders because the rest of you is filled with grief and fear and black and ugly, shame and hate. Rage. Whichever it is, it's too much. Too much to stay and so you vacate premises. You disappear on yourself. You kick and scream at the world around you or you don't talk to it at all. You stop calling and checking and answering. You hate everything and there is no sunshine in your eyes.

Shhh. The writing is too fast and the feelings are pushing my fingers around on the keys. You have to quiet yourself enough to believe that there is peace.

I can't. I feel like I could write myself into a hurricane. A tidal wave. A fear so tremendous that my feelings would fill all of me with blackness and and come crashing out of my eyes, a cascade of black ink that trails across the floor and pools ugly stain into the carpet. I have never been so afraid so much of the time in my life.

There are moments when I come back. Glimpses of me. Class. Sitting in the yard with my dog. Talking to some guy on the street about his chihuahua. I can still sometimes hear the ringing of my wind chime reminding me,"It will be ok." I don't necessarily believe it, but I can't argue with something as sacred as wind.

How much sense does that make.

Peace and compassion to all living beings.

I guess I'll try writing again tomorrow.