your distraction turned into the nightmare you’d been running from
(and I’m sorry for that.)
Tag: writing (Page 5 of 7)
I don’t think I can do it.
I don’t think I can be the hero,
the writer who overcomes
everything to share her wisdom
and support with other individuals.
I can only be the writer who
attempts therapy through
self-indulgent poetry and writes
articles only through a drunken haze,
thoughts ablaze
with all the ways I’ve failed.
Add this to the list, this barely
started wander into the abyss of
self-help, so difficult I can’t even
help myself. I gave it my
best shot but my best shot was
still such a long way off.
I don’t know if I can rake this all up again.
It’s too close to the surface as it is
and requires no watering to grow,
there’s no need to hoe, and the seeds
were sown so long ago and so deeply
burrowed – I am borrowing memories
that never run out, I go back in time
every time I write a single line and
it’s scaring me so much right now
I just can’t.
I don’t know if I can do this Lynch syndrome memoir/self help book thing. I think it might be too hard. I’m going to try anyway, but I’m afraid I’m committing myself to something that is going to be more of an emotional struggle than it’s worth. I will press on. Just not tonight. Writing is hard for so many different reasons.
I’m writing a book about Lynch syndrome because there are like, none out there for people just diagnosed. I’ve started on it with a kind of self-help bent, but it already sounds too clinical. I think I’ll go more down the memoir route – still helpful, but putting my bad memories to good use. I think something personal will be more empathetic and appropriate.
Sometimes when I’m trying to write about my experiences
I stop suddenly and smack myself on the forehead and
cover my face and just want to scream because
I can’t believe that this is me.
I have written this post for the writing contest: How Writing Has Positively Influenced My Life, hosted by Positive Writer. Click here for more info!
I’ve loved writing for as long as I can remember. It’s been the only constant thing that I have always wanted to do – thoughts of being a
teacher, a psychologist, and fleeting fantasies of being an actress or in a band, all came and went. But writing is the only thing that ever stuck, the one thing I’ve never doubted my ability to do.
I have been digging
so hard
dirt is all over my face
and my eyes are damp
from the strain of it all
but no-one else can see.
I have been digging it all up
heaving it out of the ground
and throwing it in piles
all over my garden.
The soil is soft and it’s easy.
I make it look easy,
should anyone be watching.
They’re not. I do it in the
dead of night. I’m good at hiding
it and not even on purpose.
It just comes naturally to me.
Dig it up. Turn over the soil.
Put it back. Plant marigolds
on top of it. Making a scene
ain’t my scene. Dig it up.
Rake over it. Water it with
whisky. Put it back to bed but
check on it in the night like
a parent checking in on their
children as they sleep. It only
pretends to be asleep.
I can feel myself coming down
or going up, or moving in
whichever direction is the right one.
I don’t know how I’m doing it
or how to keep doing it,
but I hope I do.
I think I’m getting worse at hiding this.
This is both good and terrible.
Mostly terrible.
Actually all terrible.
I’m angry at the person I am now
because I’m not the same
as the person I used to be.
I don’t know how to change.
I could pick myself back up
but I’m only one person
and I don’t know how.
It seems I’m still learning the art of knowing when to finish a poem.
You know, instead of trying to cram every idea that pops into my head into that one poem I’m currently working on. Because sometimes I have ideas that sort-of-but-don’t-really fit into one neat piece, and if I try to mash them together they become something that’s not neat at all. I know I don’t edit my poems much, but I do try to give them some kind of finesse. Also someone, somewhere from inside my memory, said something like “If a poem only has three good lines, it should only be three lines long.”
