Sometimes writing a sentence is the biggest deal there ever was and getting from the bed to the shoes to the street while still breathing is the most desperately difficult act a person can muster.
These holidays are hard some years. Some years I feel the pain of what I've lost so heavily, the family members that have died, the way my core has changed. And the years stack up and the things I didn't finish, the things I didn't accomplish, they stack up too. They're heavy to lift and I can't seem to always get up and do a single solitary worthwhile thing.
This last year I lost my relationship with my brother. Fault doesn't matter. For this particular moment in time and my part, I'm not willing to repair it. That's not a light fact but it is one. He stopped being a good force in my life and I guess I didn't have anything to offer his either. And as that relationship dropped off of the precipice into a void, I felt and noticed others that had crumbled like rocks alongside me. The friend I'd been friends with since moving to Colorado who has stopped contacting me over the years. The other friends who've dropped off. Some I let crumble with little thought but others hurt. Some deeply so. I am the pebble that falls off the edge then and it hurts to fall into the void. It's how life goes, I guess. Some relationships continue and others perish and we don't know which will be what or the other way round.
I'm having trouble moving myself about the world. I get up to do a thing and then doubt that it's worth doing and sit back down and get not a thing done. I doubt what I used to be sure of about myself. I used to love to ski. Now I think of my brother and don't want to go. I used to charge out the door with a plan or none but an idea and charge I did.
I miss years when holidays were cousins and sleepovers and then trips to ski and big nights out and friends for days. There's this rosy colored tint that says the past was soo good. I know there were fights and that time has a way of remaking memories without their blemishes.
But this time of year, this particular moment feels full of them. Mine, the way I worry about these tiny details I didn't used to. I used to write, knowing I could fix it later. But now I'm not sure. Can I really? Can I even tell that there are errors to fix? Because when I go back and read my writing, it's terrible where I thought it was good. Drafts I thought were final still needed work. And when I look forward in my life, I'm lost in how to step forward without falling off the precipice. How do I do start without ruining it all? How do I write without it being shit? How am I 39 without a clue what I'm doing? How am I 39 without a successful career? Shouldn't I have figured it out by now? And there's a self-destructive shedevil in me that wants to wreck it all in an epic explosion. Fine. I'd like to give up. Blow shit up. Ruin it all. But I the best things I have...blow them up? I can't.
So, I'm starting the year honestly. And I honestly think it's a miracle anyone ever puts one foot in front of the other. It's a miracle we make it anywhere at all. And it'll be miracle if I get over my fears of myself and my shortcomings and my past to accomplish a single solitary thing. If I figure out how to write and live and breathe in spite of all the mistakes and mess-ups of a year, well that's an accomplishment.
Perhaps I should begin with snowpants. I'm never sorry I put them on and step out into the world.
Good luck to you on your first steps. May they be miraculous.
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