I didn't quite leave.
I find that I have been trying to write for days, months and finally more than a year and nothing comes out. I am choking on the stilted words on a page. No sentence sounds rational or real can flow out of my hands. I wondered if I will ever go back to being what I was and wasn't.
I write some vignettes. There are no intermediates to hide that I am writing about me; no thinly veiled thoughts or situations wrapped in cliches and a character's face. Reflections. Mostly on how I feel shitty or if something triggered a particular memory. I think it helped, helps. I don't like reading them because they don't sound right... a disconnect between my hindbrain and forebrain. Now more than a year later people ask me if I'm okay and it IS better. It is SCARIER because I know how bad it can get and how hard it is to crawl out of a hole that you dug yourself. I'm sitting on the front steps at the mall watching my blood drip onto the white faux marble and I'm thinking that my head hurts, but I'm not crying and I'm taking a deep breath because I'm not sure that I'm not going to pass out even though I know I'm going to be fine. The kindness of strangers is a vastly underrated attribute. THANK YOU to the guy who let me sit and bleed in his fancy shop and then gave me free cigars. Thank you to all the strangers who when I was in need helped me out-- the guy who helped my carry my broken bike three blocks because it was way to heavy for me, the person who asked if I was okay when I wasn't, the friends who texted me to make sure I was okay, the list is impossibly long. Cheers to anyone who has seen me cry in public and given me a look of sympathy but not forced me to answer a question.
I wish I could say that everyday is normal now, closer to what I used to consider my baseline. That nowadays I never wake up wondering the value of moving forward, but it's not true. That sometimes I'm not paralyzed in fear or DISGUSTED at how incapable I seem to be at doing things. But that's not true. There are more good days than bad and sometimes when I feel shitty, he shakes me like you should never shake a baby and says "tell me about it" and I believe that things do pass--both good and bad. I don't know if I am stronger, wiser or smarter like other people who are all struggling to grow in this world, but I think I am more empathetic if nothing else. I have learned to depend on the kindness of strangers and to trust friends. And I have failed, I will fail again and I know it, but I also know that when at first you don't succeed, you should try try try again.
I write some vignettes. There are no intermediates to hide that I am writing about me; no thinly veiled thoughts or situations wrapped in cliches and a character's face. Reflections. Mostly on how I feel shitty or if something triggered a particular memory. I think it helped, helps. I don't like reading them because they don't sound right... a disconnect between my hindbrain and forebrain. Now more than a year later people ask me if I'm okay and it IS better. It is SCARIER because I know how bad it can get and how hard it is to crawl out of a hole that you dug yourself. I'm sitting on the front steps at the mall watching my blood drip onto the white faux marble and I'm thinking that my head hurts, but I'm not crying and I'm taking a deep breath because I'm not sure that I'm not going to pass out even though I know I'm going to be fine. The kindness of strangers is a vastly underrated attribute. THANK YOU to the guy who let me sit and bleed in his fancy shop and then gave me free cigars. Thank you to all the strangers who when I was in need helped me out-- the guy who helped my carry my broken bike three blocks because it was way to heavy for me, the person who asked if I was okay when I wasn't, the friends who texted me to make sure I was okay, the list is impossibly long. Cheers to anyone who has seen me cry in public and given me a look of sympathy but not forced me to answer a question.
I wish I could say that everyday is normal now, closer to what I used to consider my baseline. That nowadays I never wake up wondering the value of moving forward, but it's not true. That sometimes I'm not paralyzed in fear or DISGUSTED at how incapable I seem to be at doing things. But that's not true. There are more good days than bad and sometimes when I feel shitty, he shakes me like you should never shake a baby and says "tell me about it" and I believe that things do pass--both good and bad. I don't know if I am stronger, wiser or smarter like other people who are all struggling to grow in this world, but I think I am more empathetic if nothing else. I have learned to depend on the kindness of strangers and to trust friends. And I have failed, I will fail again and I know it, but I also know that when at first you don't succeed, you should try try try again.