nothing

i want to write but my pen is dry. i want to run fast and hard, but i’m stopped here treading water trying desperately to catch my breath, never much succeeding. i feel as if i’ve got nothing when in fact i’ve got everything.

there are things i want to say but i’m tired of my own voice. i resort to niceties, to subjects off topic: the looming weather, the lack of season. when all i want to do is stand before everyone screaming. it should be allowed that i scream.

a bend at the waist grab your knees kind of scream. from the belly, from the beast, from the core of who i am these days. my problem is that i dont’ know how to let it out with enough satisfying force and loudness. so it stays inside clawing its way towards the back of my throat. my own stifled scream is tearing me to shreds.

i don’t want to talk about the price of gas or the commute or the democratic convention. i want to talk about the sorrow of humans and the way we’re wired and how we affect one another seemingly so carelessly. the chemistry of people, the energy of relationship, and the fruits of friendship.

i fall silent because i don’t want to hear my own voice when all i want to do is shout “isn’t life so fucked up?! how are any of us upright, walking, breathing, living! how are we raising our sons and daughters to be true to their hearts. how are we in this world, of this world, when none of it seems to make any sense?”

i want to remind you of this reality. that i am not depressed. that there was a time when i was anxious. when i was in dire need and simply went without. i used to be many things. at one time i was the woman who tread water with a baby in her arms. there was a time for depression but that time is not now. this type of sadness is simply feeling life. this type of sadness is me not turning my eye away from the pain. this type of sadness is not what dissolved my marriage. the loss of love and trust and belief is what caused the sadness not the other way around. this, my mood, is simply a reaction.

i take those words, those thoughts, those screams with me and i get lost in the woods. i get lost looking at how grand the trees are, forgetting how the canopy blocks out the light and spins my compass to confusion. i do this when what i really need to be doing is kneeling in the dirt with my forehead pressed to the earth, frantically finding new seedlings that sprout towards a new life. what i need to be doing is rejoicing in that new life, as small and fragile as it might be right now.

thoughts swirl around me, overwhelm me. thoughts that should be shared pen to paper. but i resist myself. i let them fly away from me. knowing i do this, i become the jackass writer who smirks and says ‘leave me alone.’ i lay on my bed and the thoughts drip out my ears and eyes and i casually let them. ‘go away from me.’ i swat at them like nuisances, and then i regret it. the familiar empty feeling that fills me once i recognize that the muse is gone. she was there on the windowsill for quite some time. she waited patiently for me to hear her whispers. she must have grown tired of my own resistance. it’s true, if you ignore her enough, she floats away. now i’m left with these empty thoughts like flattened pillows. ramblings of life that are so syncopated they make no sense to me at all.

and so it’s times like these, when the well is dry when i’m thirsty and tired and wandering ~ wondering… that i revert to nothingness. and i accept that this is the place that we all come from. and there’s nothing left to do but begin.