The Truth Is…
Here is why I haven’t been able to write in scene or in narrative exposition for the blog lately:
1. The smooch buddy spends the weekend on the mountain with me. I find that we can share the space quite nicely—not an easy thing to do since I am so patterned in this house right down to how I move in the space, where I put things, and the silence I must keep in order to write. And yet I want him only for his physical affection and the fact that we can share this space. Nothing more. Who am I?
2. That other thing—the new and fast love—remains, yet the distance and emotional nature of it exhausts me. I can feel the other person reaching for me, almost clinging, and then bucking against the fear that comes with such attachment. I used to be that person. Now, I experience such intensity and I want it to stop. Who am I?
3. A bus boy is hired to help out at work. He is 21-years-old and makes $9 per hour. He’s been employed by the craft school for all of three weeks. I have been employed there for 3 years and I earn $7.73 per hour. The injustice infuriates me and I make my stand at work only to be told to be quiet. Effectively, I am a dispensable employee. It’s a hard truth to hear after three years of putting your heart into a place. I’ve put my foot down but they will not offer a raise, especially since if I walked out today they would hire someone to replace me at a higher wage than what I currently earn. How can I keep my job and maintain my own personal dignity? And yet, I must…there will be loans to pay soon and there is no other work her. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, who am I?
How I love has everything to do with who I am.
How I work has everything to do with my moral integrity.
And I find myself in this place where the universe is telling me that I shouldn’t care where it’s not my place to care. The message is, in fact, that caring about things makes them complicated rather than fulfilling.
All of this goes completely against whom I thought I was, how I thought I lived, and where I thought I was headed. All of this also makes saying anything new (on the page) impossibly un-enticing. If I don’t know the ground beneath my own feet—heck, if I don’t even know whose feet hold me up—where is the foundation from which I may write?
