I have been thinking a lot about this blog lately. I still write often. At least a few times a week. But my writing happens primarily in the form of journaling these days. It helps me deal with my depression and anxieties, my queerness and my hatred of this queer body, my relationships and my relationship with conflict. When I was at the bottom of the ocean and thinking I would drown down there, I wrote my way through the entire experience.
Even though it helps me with all of these things, I have been finding it frustrating to write in circles and not really be producing readable work. I feel as though I have lost myself and I have lost my craft.
I thought, when I first really stopped writing a few years ago, that I was growing out of it and I didnt need or want to do it any more. I dropped out of university. I was very focused on my music and then my job and then coming out and exploring that. I watched my life do a complete 180 and I found myself in a codependent and emotionally abusive relationship. It took me a long time to realize that I was isolated from my friends and family, and unfortunately from my hobbies and passions. It took a diagnosis and moving out of that relationship and then months of quiet contemplation to heal and really begin to unpack what happened. I find myself now in a stable place, in a much healthier relationship, and missing my words and my music.
My hands feel numb with disuse. But I am playing guitar again. I am slowly building muscles that I have allowed to atrophy. My prose feels weak. Like a bridge built from popsicle sticks and glue. I want to write again. I want to publish eventually. I find myself now a queer, nonbinary trans feminist with a lot to say, especially about these experiences. It feels appropriate now with NaNoWriMo in full swing that I try and begin that work now.
If this sounds whiny or annoying, it probably is. I haven't written this for anyone but myself. Though this blog is public and on the internet, I find it quiet and private, far away from the bustle and constant circling of vultures on social media.
Someone told me once that I cannot look to find happiness in another person. They told me I have to find it in myself. I was a little younger and a lot more brash and I did not want to hear those words. Even though I am in a relationship that makes me very happy, with a person I will probably marry, I struggle every day now to find that confidence and happiness in me and for me. I wish I had taken that advice seriously, because it is so much harder now than when I was 18,19, or 20. Here I am on the cusp of 25 (ancient, I know, I started this blog when I was like 16), and just beginning to understand happiness beyond the parameters of a romantic partnership.
Hindsight is 20/20 I suppose. I am here now, battered and a little worse for wear, but I'm alive and still sober and queer and hopefully a little smarter and thankfully ready to write again.
JB, as usual, I'm flattered by your comments on my latest. After reading your words, your comments about life, social media and ultimately the place of art in our lives (music, writing, etc) I feel so much of what you are saying. You have so many layers my friend and I commend you for having the guts to explore yourself, to look into you and be brutally honest about what you see, when you see it and how you see it, in this continuing process we call the "Self." I think about it so much and sometimes, I feel like I'm a million miles away from knowing who I am, other days I'm cool with whatever it is, yet other days I couldn't care less either way.
ReplyDeleteYou're the realest of the real JB and I turn to your work because in many ways, like all great writers' work, it fuels mine. I think we are trying to see the beauty in the all shit and if we can't see that, then I think we will at least find the truth about ourselves. If you said to me, that you would withhold your art from the world because you hate the world, I would say that to keep your talent from the world, would be as unethical as the world has been to us, but I would understand, and I wouldn't judge you for it, but I would feel empty.
Please try to continue to write. I will try too. I just haven't had shit to say or a solitary fuck to give. But I should, and I need too. Glad you are back out here. HP.
Hey JB -
ReplyDeleteDox mentioned you were "back". I finally wandered over. Your work is a blessing, and like Dox says it is fuel. I appreciate your authentic honesty (that is an all too rare trait these days). Peace JB.