Writing My Heart Whole

I’m editing, deciding if I want to replace the file last saved on February 9th 2009 with this morning’s file. Have I been out of the game so long? Blogging and journaling have kept my writing skills limber, but being pulled along by my imagination is a the feeling I started writing to pursue. Has it really been over a year since I got off on making stuff up?

Ah, a fresh reason to be angry with my ex. I was worried for a moment there.

In all seriousness, lately I find myself almost constantly on the verge of tears. Any time I have a moment to myself, when I stop reading, writing, working, or watching TV on DVD (pabulum I love such as Friends, Seinfeld, and South Park), the lining of my throat gets thick and the back of my eyes sting.

How long does it take for the misery to end?

Longer, I suppose, when you’ve buried the hurt in new love. I was too cowardly to face my pain all at once, so I’ve decided to dole it out over a period of…who knows how long…and compound it with the guilt of making Becky feel like she’s not enough to keep me happy.

Of course, no one is enough to keep another person happy; ask a suicide. The only person responsible for one’s emotional state is one’s self. Yet if I allow myself to be miserable, it’s tough for Becky not to take it personally. And I don’t want to hurt her, so I keep it inside.

I’d like to be over my marriage, over Andi, over the hurt, over the anger. I’m not. Knowing when I will be would be nice, but the heart is not a wind-up toy.

Crying doesn’t help. Drinking doesn’t help. Writing my stories, much as it pains me to admit it, doesn’t help. It’s been divine losing myself behind fiction lately, remembering there’s more to pushing the cursor than hashing and rehashing the past, or worrying about the future, or decrying the present, but it’s no different than watching a Sex and the City marathon. It’s doing so I don’t have to think.

My not wanting to be in pain has no bearing on whether or not I am. The only thing that helps me feel better is writing about my feelings. For a Child Of an Alcoholic – and this is psychology talking, not just me – it’s tough to even know what I’m feeling, let alone articulate those feelings or explore their origins.

As frustrating as it is to have lost so much time being miserable, and writing about being miserable, these weeks of getting back on schedule have taught me I’m not ready. The number of stories I had running all at once before my life changed, it’s overwhelming. I can’t work like I did. In some ways, this is good. I was being pulled in so many different directions at once that I never moved. Focusing on just one story, I have the chance to move forward and finish something new.

In the meantime, there’s still some crying to be done.