I am a writer. I have always been a writer. Okay, so maybe when I was first born and not yet able to hold a pencil and all that literal shit, I was NOT a writer. But in my body, in my spirit, I have always been a writer.
Notice I didn’t say brain. Writing isn’t in the brain. Grammar, spelling, punctuation – that’s in the brain. Writing is somewhere else. It is ethereal.
When I was on deployment I always kept the pictures of my family put away. Tucked into my Bible is where they stayed. I didn’t pin them up, tape them to my bunk or inside my locker. I hid them. In order to remain sane so far away from them, I couldn’t look at those pictures unprepared. I had to be ready for it. Otherwise, it would throw me into a spiral of whatever that ache is that you get when you can’t put your hands on your children or kiss your lover’s forehead. A person can’t live like that.
Such is the danger of a writer. You can’t always go there. Well, put a better way – I haven’t always been able to go there.
I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say ~ Flannery O’Connor
And I am not always prepared to know what I think. There are some moments, days, periods of life that are just not appropriate for in-depth contemplation. Sometimes after the spouse is adored, kids are nurtured, career is clocked, food is served, teeth are brushed, I am grateful to maybe have enough energy to fold the laundry, and, if it is a particularly great day, have enough left in the tank to carry on an adult conversation with a girlfriend who has been seriously neglected. To add an in-depth conversation with myself? Yeah, no.
So, no writing.
As a point of explanation, that entire “not prepared to know what I think” paragraph had to be paused, rewritten, edited for content as there is too much left to say and analyze between the spaces and commas. I don’t have time for that.
In addition to not having time, I don’t have the inclination. I have a hard time with private writing. I heard somewhere that George Washington said, “Never write down anything you don’t want the whole world to read.” I don’t care enough to google the authenticity of that citation. The point is I believe the sentiment.
Therefore, I rarely write what I can’t publish. I don’t trust it. That being true, there is a ton of stuff in my brain that will never find the page. While necessary, the downside of that is periods of time where I just will not write. It is just too much to figure out the best way to balance authenticity with tact, honesty with privacy, truth with rant.
It’s a conundrum really. Which I suppose is only fitting. I have often felt a conundrum myself; multiple ideas of a person wrapped in one flesh. It often leaves me with a feeling of anxiety based on the fear that I am, once again, overthinking a situation. The truth is, I probably am but anxiety in that area is unwarranted. The bigger truth is that I am learning to process and that single act has me on track to being a more comfortable me. It’s quite the experience to scratch the surface of the courage to embrace that odd cattywampus juxtaposition of self that so often feels…well…unknowable.
So maybe I will just have to write about it…