So the thing is, I don't know if I can do this. This blog thing. I don't know, maybe I'm just being melodramatic.
I read about a hundred blogs a day. (Now I am being melodramatic. It's really about five.) And they're so beautiful and simple and full of life. Someone ate homemade yoghurt for breakfast, someone is infertile, someone washes her kid's hair last so she won't get cold (which I will remember), someone is so broken that she can't go on, someone picked beans from her garden, someone read a great book, someone enjoyed her daily commute. I love every syllable of it. I love every person who writes it. It makes me feel like I'm not quite so alone.
And then it makes me feel so completely alone that my heart might just stop, and I can't stand even to know they exist. And I don't want to write about the specific reason why, because that's the problem. I can't fathom that the mundane details of my life are of interest in the slightest to anyone (even though I relish the mundane details of the lives of other women), but the not-mundane details of my life are just too much. Too much for me. Too much for anyone. So much that I have to apologize for them, and I feel guilty and ashamed every time I let any slip. Like that dream where you show up at school and realize that you're naked. Or the dream where you're making love and then you realize that someone is watching. (And you never get to finish! Oops, am I the only one who's ever had that dream?) But I digress.
Here's what my day looked like. I woke early to a deliciously quiet house, a purring cat, and a cup of PG Tips with raw milk and local honey. I can't remember what was on my mind, but I remember it being peaceful. I spent a half hour praying and a half hour talking with a friend, a sort of shocking and very pleasant new blessing in my life (the friend and the praying). I rode all the way to work fretting about how much I hope to be a blessing in return. (And fearing desperately that I am not, because that's what I do. And beating myself up for fearing and fretting, because they make me feel so unattractive.) All day I sat at my desk, reading about New Testament textual criticism (ugh, don't ask) and alternately thinking hopefully about my weekend and anxiously about my ovaries and worrying about my sister and my mother and my boss (who is in some jungle in Chad right now) and my friend's teetering marriage and my other friend's unborn baby and my other friend's insomnia and my other friend's lost faith and experiencing elation and searing pain and boredom and exhaustion, because these are the places where my mind goes to escape New Testament textual criticism. I walked up the hill today because I was too tired to ride. I came home whining a bit about being tired, and my husband got me a drink (McCallan 12, two fingers, broken just a little) and made most of dinner (chicken cacciatore). Then I filled two internet shopping carts with metal smithing supplies, my grandmother's final gift to me, and they're minimized right now because I can't convince myself that I deserve to pursue my passions. Then I read a few blog entries, pining all along for not knowing the women who wrote them and paralyzed by my inability to write anything as valid and sweet and authentic and free. And here we are.
So I'm just not sure that I can do this blog thing. Or maybe I can. I don't know. It doesn't feel real out here in cyberspace to me. There are no hugs or kisses, no tilts of the head or laughing or cups of tea or tears. No real people; just words written by people I wish I could love who will never know who I am. At least, I can't imagine them caring about who I am. (Yes, part of me is still an angsty teenager. I try to keep her locked away, but she so damn clever. Shimmies through the bars every time I trap her.) And I'm so, so very very tired of . . . something. I don't know. I'm just tired.
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6 comments:
Write.
Do it. Even when it seems useless and isolating. You will discover the freedom that comes from plucking the careening thoughts from the little racetrack in your mind and putting them down on paper where you and others can see them. It won't be perfect (what is in this life?) but it will help make room in that busy brain of yours. It will help. And it will allow others a tiny peek into your heart and mind and soul. There is great good and great comfort which can come from that. The entries from the two years where I blogged regularly are precious to me because they help me to understand who I was then and to make a tiny bit more sense of who I am now. If nothing else, they make me more gentle with myself and more respectful of the strengths and beauty I possess (this from a woman who is every bit as self-lacerating as you are.)
And don't worry about phrasing or impressing or self-critiquing or trying to elicit a certain reaction. Just write. From the heart. That is what makes you cry when you read the blogs of these other women. You are seeing their hearts. The profundity is in the vulnerability.
Thanks for the encouragement, Kendra. This is something I really want to do, because it's so beautiful when other people do it. But I'm petrified of it. I have no idea when the hell I'm doing. It's like being on a stage, and let's just say the most I ever participated in an audition was making coffee runs for the director. I feel so much more at home in the black hoodie. But I think you're right; it'd probably be good for me. It seems to be good for other people.
Aww, you don't have a blog anymore? Because I'd totally read it if you did.
You know, something that helped me early on was telling myself that I'd write on my blog every day. That way, I didn't wait until I had something that I felt was blog-worthy (which might have meant I'd have waited forever!)...some days I just wrote about flowers, or cutting my fingernails. It kind of cut down on the anxiety of: do I have anything worth saying?
I'm not suggesting you should write every day, because I know that isn't for everyone, but maybe you could promise yourself you'd write every Wednesday, or every Monday and Thursday, or whatever? Just an idea.
By the way, melodrama is just fine. We in the blogosphere do it all the time, and frankly it helps us all feel not quite so alone. As someone recently said, what the hell's the point of telling a story if you don't exaggerate it?
This was a great blog post. And I'm still an angsty teenager too sometimes.
Tamie,
Thank God I'm not the only adult angsty teenager. And thank God I'm not the only melodramatic hyperbole user.
And thank you for reading and for encouraging me. I'll keep trying.
I did indeed read your blog the whole way through in one sitting just as you said. You're almost always right when you tell me things. You should feel good about that. I miss you intensely. Reading
this I was overwhelmed by how much I love you, how much we have in common, how deeply I wish you were closer so we could be real friends. You are one of the most beautiful people I know and I have the honor and pleasure of calling you my sister. I love you. I'm going to stop gushing now before I lose my credibility. <3
I love you too. I miss you! XO
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