Soul Reasonings: ...On Writing Pt. 2

Ok, so here is the long awaited part 2 to the "On Writing" post. This one is a little disjointed, cuz I've been busy the past days, and unable to maintain a consistent flow. I'll try to clarify and edit it in future. Sorry folk...

Pt. 2

Time passed. I finished secondary school and worked for 2 years at a certain fallen financial giant. I went to college in the Atl (shawty). I made new friends, lived thru new experiences, and basically took life for what it was. I never wrote anything, and I never ventured more about myself than I was asked. I kept my love for reading though, and picked up a profound appreciation for poetry, especially spoken word. Sometime during my sophomore, I realized though that I had either lost my aptitude for writing, or I was so turned off and (for lack of a better word) traumatized by my experience that I simply was unable to write. Anything. I mean it. Simple short stories, simple verses, hell, even essays for class. I would start to write, and somewhere after in the middle of the second paragraph, the flow of words would simply dry up. The ideas and concepts would still be there, but they never seemed to be able to make it to the paper. My professors all kept telling me the same thing every time I handed in an assignment: "We can see your ideas, but the essay isn’t flowing. It’s jumbled.” I gave them fits. In their opinion, I was extremely intelligent, but could not transfer that intelligence to a piece of paper for shit. And they couldn’t figure out why. I didn’t know why (at the time) for that matter. And then, it started coming back. Not immediately, I still would not write even a note to myself for another 3 years, but the flow started coming back. I started back making up little rhymes in my head. I started doodling random sentences in the back of my notebooks. The funny thing is that as much as a traumatic experience took away my ability to create; an equally, if not, more traumatic experience brought it right back. In short, I met her.

Now, I’m not going to get into details about her. Trust me when I say that is an entire blog post on its own (actually, maybe 3… and a half). I will offer this much, in this space right now, just to give a general idea of the impact she had. We lived together for a year. I would say that 8 out of those 12 months constituted the hardest 8 months of my life, except for the fact that when we broke up; I went thru a 2 year depression that really wasn’t a depression. I was bitter. Hell, I was angry. I developed a razor-sharp tongue. I would lash out at friends and enemies alike. My mother pretty much left me alone, and when I finally did summon up the strength to open up about what happened, she (my mother) wanted to whup her ass (and my mother is/was the most non-violent person I know). I carried issues from my relationship with her, over to my next 2 relationships. This is 7 years later, and I’m still carrying some issues. I would refuse to discuss things that were visibly affecting me, passing them off as “nothing”. I only moved from arguably spitting on her if I ever saw her again, to just acting like I don’t know her, last year. They say there is a thin line between love and hate. I didn’t cross it, I long-jumped. And I never really spoke about it. Don’t get me wrong, I have my inner circle who I confide in, but even that didn’t seem to help. There was this rage that was just there, with nowhere to go. I would breakdown crying at night, not cuz I was sad and missed her. I was just that mad at her. Think of it as being brought over to the dark side. You can never really go back. In the space of 2 years, she had introduced me to feeling of true anger, jealousy, and obsession. And though, it may not be in your nature, once those emotions touch you, you never truly remove their presence or influence. But one good thing came out of that relationship. About a month afterward, I found a little blue notebook lying around the house. And I kept. And late one night, I wrote a single line in the middle of it: “I hate you.” I breathed a little, turned and went to sleep. And I slept a little better that night. Not much, but just enough to actually sleep soundly.

I still didn’t really write much after that night. The emotion conveyed in those 3 words scared the shit out of me. I had never dealt with the emotion “hate” before. But I couldn’t deny the fact that I had derived a very small amount of relief from just putting the words down on paper. A small weight had been shifted. But the mere fact that the emotion was out there, in the world, in a space that was something other than the confines of my mind was frightening. So I stopped. Again. Before I even really re-started. And I just continued to hold stuff in, not letting any of the pain, the hurt or the anger go. Until it cost me something I really valued, and it all came pouring out. I ranted and raved. I drank to excess. I smoked to excess. I leaned heavily on my friends for support. And none of it really helped. Then one day, I sat in front of my pc, I logged onto fb (Facebook, for the uninitiated), started a new note, and I wrote. And I wrote. I wrote without any real rhyme or reason. I just let it flow out, through me, and onto the screen. When I was done, I had about 1200 words of pure emotion and mostly random thoughts. You can still read it. It’s the very first posting on this blog. And you know what? I felt free when I was done. For however long that brief period of respite lasted, my mind was at ease. I had fought my demons, and won the battle. I lived to tell another day. It was a sweet release that I had never truly felt in all the late nights I had spent on friends’ porches, in all the bottles of JWB that I had downed, in all the packs of DuMaurier I had inhaled. I love my inner circle. They are my family. I only wish I could do as good a job of being there for them, as they are there for me. But that night, I truly had found the elixir to my wounds.

Since then, I have very slowly gotten back into the flow of writing regularly. I am glossing over a lot of moments, both major and minor, that contributed to my reaching this point. But this post, combined, is already over 2000 words long (I love word count), and I think some of the things that I would write about could be food for another rant or reminisce on another day. But, that day will come, and I hope that I will still derive the same joy, piece of mind and tranquility from staining parchment, with dye, and setting words (and my emotions with them) free