Late at Night

Late at night I’m listening to music. I’m not writing. I’m not reading. I’m not searching authors and literary awards. I’m not thinking about how to approach my next story—what story should be told, what it means to me, why it matters.

I’m listening to music. The oldest of the music that changed me forever, made me want to cling for dear life to whatever I knew, whatever I had at the time to understand why the life I live would mean something to myself and others who would share my oxygen.

I went two years without listening to music. The sound of it, the sound—sound—hurt too much. That thing that I had learned for decades how to channel. Sound being more than what ears hear, but what minds crave. When my mind, because of music, escaped me, sound began to destroy me. Not music, but sound all by itself begging to be organized into something that could speak.

And now that I write, sound is all I can form into sentences. Words have started to escape me yet hold me hostage. I wanted words to free me and now all I can write is harmony. What does it sound like, is all I can ask when I write a sentence. What does it sound like?

I remember when sound eviscerated me, scraped my insides down to only blood vessels, no organs to pump my blood. Sound made me weak—more than weak: skeletal. I was defeated, humiliated, dehumanized by what I had for years waged war against and conquered.

Now—right now—and also the now of so many nights past, I yearn, sacrifice on the altar for my ability to hear the words that form in my skeletal psyche. I gain all control then lose it over and over again when a sound sizzles and steams above my consciousness. It doesn’t need me anymore; it waits for me to come to it, slows down for me to catch it, reach for it, slam it down under my palms and stomp it under my feet.

And I do. I do trample it. I shatter it into shards reflecting slices of myself sharp on every edge, prickling my skin at the touch of them with barely visible sprinkles of blood where the callouses on my hands once formed.

Words are for speaking. I’m tired of hearing my own voice. Late at night, I want to sit still. I want to listen.

Struggle Truth

Social media is social media. Sometimes the pictures and announcements portray the truth of our happiness, joy, and hope. Other times, the pictures and announcements are to create what we wish the truth to be. It’s not always a malicious endeavor. We hope. We hope for…

Part of my writing journey is to share the truth that I would certainly want to hide. It’s scary. Downright terrifying. But it’s also liberating. I don’t need anyone to read any of what I have shared, but I know—and am released because of it—that I’ve said a truth. Any truth. Because every time I post good news, great news, I feel the importance of also saying, “This isn’t all of it. There’s more.” It doesn’t mean I’m wallowing in pain. Maybe I am, but maybe I’m just showing that pain and joy can coexist.

I’ve had this blog for over a decade. I’ve shared during my worst of human experience thus far. And my hope, my hope is…that it remains the worst, that it will only get better from here. Or there. The “there” that was mental illness, substance abuse, unemployment, isolation, and abandonment.

Yet it is better. I just got hired by the New York Times. They got in touch to say they’ve read my writing and want to know if I’m NY. I’m not. Yet I’m moving there in August to start a writing degree at Columbia University. And my honest truth: I may not finish it. The way I struggle, it may be one more unfinished ventures that I have too many of to count.

It is no coincidence. I’ve agonized in prayer for five years over getting into a graduate school program with money to pay for it. I’ve already turned down offers that came with no scholarship. Over the years that I prayed, I acknowledged that if I got into a graduate school program without any money to finance it, it didn’t come from God. I withdrew from offers in agony to honor that it wasn’t from God. It wouldn’t be an answer to the prayers I’ve cried out of my mouth and out of my heart after years of a broken career path punctuated by struggle.

Now that it comes, now that I have a scholarship, now that the NYT has hired me with the question of “do I live in NY?” I can rejoice. Yet my rejoicing doesn’t change the heartbreak and turmoil that I face with the very diagnosis that stalled my life, made it into a dry dust swirling through the desert with nowhere to go and no origin to identify where it came from.

It still hurts. I still hurt. And I write this to say:

No matter what social media tells you, people are still hurting. Some people are hurting so much that they lie on social media just to envision what life could be if only they had the ability to live it.

The truth of the matter is that truth often becomes what people want the truth to be—not what it really is.

Formulaic

I have nothing to write about although there is so much to write about, always, whether I have it or not. But I always do. That’s my curse–that’s why I get stuck too often, or not enough: the impulsive times when I need to slow down and think about my next decision.

Writing can require that I stop (because merely slowing down isn’t enough to write), but it can also tangle my brain and draw a blank when I don’t know/can’t find the words to speak to or of the heart. It can stop me the wrong way, binding my tongue when the best thing for me to do is speak. Or the simplicity of simply needing to say ‘hello’ to myself, to remind myself that I’m still there even when I’m not here.

When writing blocks, it could be blocking outside noise and give me quiet, but most times, the quiet gives me too much liberty, not enough freedom. It liberates my silence, but doesn’t always break me free from what I was silent about–it doesn’t free me of myself.

It does feel good though. Sometimes that’s all I need although it’s rarely ever all I want. I don’t believe in happiness anymore. Only wholeness. I’ve learned that I can be unhappy, but still whole. I’ve learned that I can’t be un-whole and still be happy. Writing gives me happy, but not whole.

Yet most times, I still tend to find myself trying to write my way to whole. Because the idea of knowing how to say something, how to put intangible things into words, is wholly magnifying: the microscope showing me all the nano-bits that can’t be researched by the naked eye.

That’s why I like physics. It’s so close to the word psyche, and just like psychology, it can’t be seen under a microscope. My brain will never reveal what’s in my mind and a formula will never reveal the truth.

Disclaimer

free as a bird? (drawing by donna lee)

There are a couple things I never write about on this blog: my immediate family and my husband. Odd, considering that these relationships are the closest and most impactful for me. It’s not just for privacy sake. The stories I tell about myself are my stories. Once I encroach on the stories that are intertwined to the point of telling their stories, I’ve taken something that doesn’t belong  to me.

And yet, I can’t help the fact that lurking between my interactions with the people most dear to me are stories that are mine alone. The temptation would be to tell those stories without admitting that any of these people are involved. Only I would know…until that person reads it and recognizes that the story is also theirs, and that they didn’t get to tell their side.

I’ve done this with friends. I never mention their names, but they know who they are. They reach out to me to clarify something that existed in the story that I would have no way to tell myself because it isn’t my side of it. There are situations that have been explained, issues that have been resolved as a result of being contacted after I’ve written about it. The beauty of it is that I have been able to say the things that I couldn’t say to them because I wasn’t actually speaking to them.

Don’t we all know what that is about? After a situation, we think about the things we would have said or would have done when it’s too late to do so. People contact me having been able to hear those unsaid or undone things and speak with a clarity that was impossible only a short time prior.

But they also get to see my thoughts–what I thought about what took place. What it meant. What it felt like. 

Sometimes, or most times, I slap myself for posting what I have whether it involves someone else or not. But then I remember that the results are magnanimous. I thought through something. Publicly. It doesn’t stay in the dark. And when I get clarity on it by hearing back from someone, the effects outweigh the privacy. Not just those directly involved in the post. I hear from people who have a similar story, or simply have input on what I wrote. They push past their own privacy to share something. And not everyone are people I know. Some people I know are folks who I have no intimate relationship with. 

In the end, I’ve accomplished a few things. I’ve pushed past the shame or sadness. I’ve let something out that only had power in the dark as though light itself melted it. Or I’ve created resolve and resolution. It doesn’t mean I’m bold or brash or brave. Quite the opposite. But it does mean I’m free.