2.16.10
Here I am again, after a two day hiatus. I'm feeling excited, relieved, overwhelmed, pressured and frightened. Happy to be writing, not knowing what to write, wanting it to come out perfectly. The perfect cocktail for a kind of buzzing urgent paralysis, as if I am horseback, digging my heels into the creature's flanks to urge him forward while pulling back on the reins to hem him in. I am both beast and rider. All in all a lonely situation.
I did however tell K. this morning that I was coming to the library to write this morning. I am telling no one I am blogging because when that gets played out in my mind there is an uprising in the house against me and a furious end to my friendship with L. too. But I did share that partial truth with K. and it felt pretty good--a whisper of relief of being known. I even told B. last night that I, too, like him, feel life should be easy and that I get angry at myself and others when it is not. I mean really, really, really angry. I left the last part out to B. I felt cold squiggly fear in my chest after I bared my secret to him, but it passed.
And that is it. I live in secret, and I am getting tired of it. I live in secret. I write in secret. I am hard pressed to create art in my art group because I am not alone. I am either going to soar on my stead over that Olympic jump or I am going to balk at it and be sent flying over the rails and break my neck, the metaphorical dreams of being an Olympic rider only remaining as a taunting nightmare. There is no in between.
I realized last week that while I have things that mean something to me--this writing, making art, farming, meditation--they are like blocks of chalk--dry, dusty,diminishing in my silence. At B.'s concert there were so many people there for him. I've always been surprised that B. has such a following, that people thing he is a "great guy," when I have had so many problems with him. Indeed, when I first met him a year and a half ago i couldn't stand him. He didn't have an emotional or social boundary to save his life and I had not way to control what came out of his mouth. When some invasive comment did fly out it invariable landed in my heart like a fish hook and I got terrified, with the requisite paranoid images flooding my brain.
But now he is so much better and I am able to sit with him lately and listen to him, giving him my time and attention and interest. And as I suspected, we have a lot in common. It's just that he says it, shamelessly, and I don't. His lack of guilt and shame is one of the last thing that perturbs me about him, while at the same time, I covet it. So last night, I let a little out with the comment about life should be easy, and that conversation had more meaning for me than this blog entry, or my paintings that hang on the wall in the living room for all to see. I've known it for a while now--a good, connected, conversation has more meaning for me than anything else.
So here's the question: can I bring people into my art, my writing? Can the blood of relationship, the lightness of social connection be infused into my dry assignations of meaning in my life? Can I have a conversation about something I've created and survive the criticism or the compliments? Either one, right now, stymies me and holds me in my tracks.
I have no idea who, if anyone, is reading this blog, yet I imagine I am getting all sorts of criticism: "dry writing," "self-indulgent," "boring," "examining her belly-button," just as an example.
But is it only my art and writing that needs opening up? Maybe I shouldn't even start there. I know when I do share I invariably stop doing whatever I am doing, even if it is just being me. Can "me" stand the test of "you?" Can my blogging stand the test of lousy comments if I were to allow comments? Or would the pressure to create constantly good writing cause me to shut down this blog if I got good feedback?
One might wonder what this has to do with being schizoaffective. It all sounds quite normally neurotic, doesn't it. But as my shrink said to me "you have a psychosis that masquerades as a neurosis." These struggles of meaning, isolation, loneliness and creative energy have deep and implacable tap roots, like beautiful water lilies on a pond that have roots down through the clouded, silty water down to the muddy bottom teeming with snapping turtles and underwater snakes (if they exist.) And that's the thing--my experience of these feelings are so extreme that they might not even exist and I am left to bushwhack my way through some fantastical underwater jungle. In the past year or so I have slowly given up trying sort through the roots, reeds, weeds, and dangerous reptiles and just tried to find a way to breath. Some would call this "keeping your head above water," a common phrase for an uncommon problem.
But I am a hybrid. Some part of the problem is uncommon--those underwater snakes. But they wrap themselves around what is often common--a wish to succeed, to have meaning, to love, to be connected--chocking these things and making them nearly impossible to achieve. (bad word if I'm thinking Buddhist.)
I must go now. My time is running up. More about this later.