writing... or not

I haven't written anything in forever... literally years. For a while, I told myself that life was so good, I just wanted to be in it... to enjoy it. For a long while after that, I didn't have to tell myself anything at all, because I stopped thinking about it. I stopped missing it. Then, things went to shit, as they will... actually, THING went to shit. Everything else stayed great... everything else was great before, too. In the bad time. So, I did what I do... I sat down to write. And then I remembered why I really quit. Sure things were good. And I was enjoying it. Living in the moment and all that. But that wasn't what stopped me... because I can enjoy life, and live life, and still write. I quit because I can't dance... I quit because the things I didn't know how to write about, kept popping up, and I kept trying to dance around them, and I kept falling right into them... and so I would delete, and delete, and stare at the keyboard, and delete again. I would write it down, and overcome with guilt and shame, and the hugeness of the secrets, I would delete it all. These things weren't for sharing. They were too big, too horrible... they were things that I could only speak with my love about in whispers, even though we were alone in our home. Things that I didn't want others to know. Shit, things I didn't even want to know. Something happened to these things... their badness, their secretness, their shame, made them balloon up in size. I tiptoed around them, pretending they didn't exist, and they grew. I shoved them into a corner, in reality and in my mind. and they grew. I made up Voldemort type nicknames for them "the things that we don't speak of"... " the bad times"... and they grew. Then the state came in, and they found somewhere else for my son to live... somewhere that it was safer for all of us... and those things started shrinking... they got normal size... and then even smaller, like driving away from a skyscraper and watching it shrink and shrink until you can pinch it between your fingers. But when I sat down to write, my brain would do this thing... it would whisper to me... 'hey... do you know what we haven't talked about? what we can't talk about? lets talk about that..." and for a while I tried to just do it... just put it on paper, but I always deleted it, because I couldn't say the words. I can't say the words. Not where other people might see them. They might judge him. And more selfishly, they might judge me. They might realize that I'm a terrible person, or see my damaged child and wonder what I did wrong. So I write, and delete, write and delete. Hey... at least I'm writing.

Love

When I was four, I knew what love was. It was the man of my life playing house, and building me a big deck to watch the stars. It was a man who drove me to daycare with his bike in the back of his truck, because he couldn't afford the additional fuel to get to work and back. It was one person writing their life around my needs. Love was sweet and beautiful, and completely fulfilling.

When I was twelve, I knew what love was. I saw my mother and my father, and their totally dysfunctional divorce, and their history. Love was two monsters. One always giving, giving, giving. Trying to feed the other, quiet the other, please the other. One was always taking, taking, taking. Trying to win. Trying to have it all. Love was ugly, and it hurt, and nobody won.

When I was seventeen, I knew what love was. Love was the stroke of my cheek. The talk of my beauty. The promises. It was the idea of everything... all that was asked was the gift of one thing. Just my body. That's all. Love was hungry, and without feeding, it would die away.

When I was twenty, I knew what love was. It was a little blue plus sign. It was new life. It was the fear of the unknown, and the hope that everything would be better than I feared. Love was a hand on my ever-growing stomach, not promising to have all the answers, or the cures, but still promising to walk each step beside me.

Now I'm thirty-one, and I know what love is. Love is not the one who smiles when you are happy, it is the one that holds you while you cry. Love is not the ability to give when you have it all, it is the ability to keep giving when you are running on empty. Love is not the big picture, it's the glue that holds all the pieces of that picture together when they're trying their hardest to fall apart. Love is liking someone when they're at their worst... wanting to be near them when you should want to punch them... wanting to hold on when everything inside you is screaming to let go. Love is the whisper in your head to just breathe... just keep going... just keep trying. It's the reason to fight when it all seems hopeless. Love is worth it.

sometimes

sometimes i hold a glass in my hand and have a calm conversation with someone, but the whole time i'm thinking about throwing it at the concrete... thinking about how it would sound when it smashed... thinking about the look on their face, the silence that would follow, and then the questions.

sometimes i am laughing and having a great time, and everything comes over me like a landslide, and i'm still laughing but inside i feel like crying, and you'd never notice except that maybe i will lean against the wall a little so i don't fall to the ground.

sometimes i look at someone and i can't talk to them and they wonder why, but inside i'm wishing that i could slam my fist into their face and watch things break... i'm wondering how hard it would be to make them cry, to push them over the edge, to get back what they have stolen.

sometimes i lay in in bed with my eyes closed and think about 'the secret' and self-fulfilling prophecy, and visualization... and i wonder if i could will myself to stop breathing, to finally rest, to be done with worldly pain.

sometimes these things overcome me and i wallow, and i paint my world black...

but sometimes, a little girl climbs up in my lap, and puts her hand on my tummy and says so quietly you can barely hear her "skin", and lets out an even tinier sigh, like i am saving her. sometimes a little boy sits and watches discovery channel with me, and tells me how incredible science is, and lists off all the amazing things that people have done, and wonders at how they decided to draw, to sing, to light the world up. sometimes the big strong man i love, the one who shoulders everything, pulls me tight against him and tells me that i amaze him. ME. amazing him. and then i breathe a little easier, and i find a way to be glad for every breath again.