Chatter...

I’m sitting in a pool of words and thoughts swimming around my raw, chapped little body. I feel I need to be in a padded room right now complete with soundproof walls and a straightjacket. These words and thoughts are desperate to come together and form something coherent but I can’t seem to make it all fit.
I want it all to fit. Right this minute. It’s too uncomfortable to sit here and let it all drift by without organizing it. My fingers reach out trying to grab hold of something, anything that will stop the free fall into something unknown but I can’t grab anything when I’m drowning.
Except I’m not drowning. It only feels that way. It’s like watching something on IMAX where it feels like you’re really there on that rollercoaster or next to that shark but you’re not. You’re safe in a theater letting the images play out before you.
I am home. I just took a shower and ate dinner. I can do whatever I want. It’s just me now. Isn’t that what I wanted? Why is hurting so much then?
I have jewelry to make, a journal to continue with, a book proposal I’d like to get started on this century and yet I can’t sit still long enough to touch any of it. Instead I’m taking the long way to the places I need to go to. I feel I’ve spent more time walking and on trains than at the actual places I was using those means to get to.
“It sounds like things aren’t coming naturally to you right now.” my new therapist Beth observes after explaining to her the structure of my days off.
I shake my head. “No. It used to but because of how my work days are, I don’t do anything. I save it all for my days off and sometimes, I just don’t feel like it. I fear that not feeling like it over and over again will end up with nothing accomplished so it feels imperative to get as much done as possible.”
“You’re very disciplined and I’m wondering if we just need to explore your creative process more and redirect how you approach these things. I feel they should be therapeutic and give energy rather than taking energy.”
“Definitely!” I beam.
“Ok, so I want you to simply try writing without an agenda. Let your mind go where ever it goes and write it down. Don’t judge it, just do it. For an hour. If you go longer, great, if not, at least do it for that hour.”
I nod.
“How does that sound?”
“I want it! I do. I’m nervous about actually doing it though. I always have an agenda.”
“I knew you would say that.” she smiles. “Ok, so when you’re writing and you’re getting overwhelmed, stop, and breathe. Really breathe deeply a couple of times and get back to it.”
“Deal.”
My mind goes to all sorts of places that my pen and paper don’t capture. I’m not sure why I don’t record any of it really. I think some of it I’m afraid of. I’m afraid of what I might say or might feel. I’m also afraid of feeling silly or getting stuck so I say nothing.
When I leave Beth’s office I have the best intentions. Ok. I’m going to do this. I get on the train and head to Millennium Park. I walk around and look for a spot to sit and open my notebook, ready for all of this to pour out of me.
It’s awfully busy out here. I observe while meandering. I feel the warm sun on my back and a breeze pushing my straightened hair around my face and smile feeling lucky to be outside today, to have a day off, to be simply breathing.
I plop down under a tree and give in to my compulsive phone checking habit. For six months now Jeff and I have sent bagillions of text messages throughout any given day. It’s going to take a while to stop anticipating the screen of my phone lighting up or the chirping sound it makes when I don’t have the ringer on silent alerting me to some sweetness he’s delivering.
Opening my notebook, I find a blank page and sigh. A screaming seagull captures my attention. Some girls laughing next to me compete with the seagull and with all the people walking around…my head might start spinning. Maybe I picked a bad spot for concentrating. I write a couple of sentences then stop to watch the sun glittering through the leaves on the trees over me.
This is a bad idea. I need less distraction. I pick up and go again ending up at Filter, a coffee shop not far from my apartment. It’s packed but I find a table. I open the notebook again. I get a paragraph pushed out but am still judging, thinking a little too much and desperately wanting to simply let go but I don’t have a clue as to how to do that. I start writing again, asking more questions of myself instead of simply stringing sentences together.
Maybe this is just what it’s going to be today. I pack up after an hour and head home.
The sun is blazing but I run anyway, sweat racing down my spine. I try to remind myself that the writing will come once the dust settles and I find a routine again. My life was just enmeshed with someone else’s. I’m not tolerant of the fact that an adjustment is being made and all I can do is put one foot in front of the other.
Once I make it home again I try to quiet the chatter in my brain to figure out what it is I want to do. Nothing is clear. Well, one thing for sure is clear and that is a much needed shower.
“Just do what you know.” my high school art teacher would tell me when I didn’t have all the answers as to what direction I wanted to take a particular project in. I’ve kept that sentence tucked away with me ever since.
I go through the motions without paying much attention to the water spraying onto my skin or the smell of the strawberry scrub I adore. I get out of the tub and wrap a towel around myself sighing for the hundredth time today.
Once dressed I park my tail on the couch, turn on the computer and take a look at the submission guidelines for a publishing company based in San Francisco. I tell myself I can do all of this. I can write this proposal. I don’t have to have all the answers now but I’ll have them eventually.
Upon reading these guidelines the dermatitis that has plagued me since moving here is sparking. Not only is it eating my hands, it’s threatening to eat my arms too. I click out of the browser set the computer on the coffee table.
I take this opportunity to go to the grocery store and get veggie burgers. On my way back a (seemingly) schizophrenic black man holding a Walkman waltzing toward me is yammering on about God knows what then very coherently says to my face “I love you honey!”
I think of Rob and laugh.
At home I eat and try to be still. Nervous energy is pulsing through my veins. I have enough of it to light up New York City. I try to ask myself what I want. I want to write for hours. I want to write unabashedly until it’s all out of me. I want to be uncensored and unafraid. I want to hurl words in big, bold, all capital letters across a blank page. I want to sing until my vocal chords can’t produce sound and talk until there are no words left. I want to dance all night until the sun begins to rise. I want to cry until my eyes won’t make tears anymore, laugh until I can’t breathe, run until my lungs can no longer expel the air they take in and express myself in all the ways I’ve held back, then…sleep like I’ve just eaten a Thanksgiving dinner.
Until I figure out how to accomplish that, the chatter continues…