Me again

I kept my best journals during junior high. That was when I felt that I had no one I could connect with, like I was adrift, so alone, with a mind running through my head that was completely disattached to everything else, with a mouth that couldn't speak anything that I thought, within a body that physically couldn't actually go anywhere beyond the immediate area because I was like a prisoner in the lovely home in which I lived and in which my father ruled with an iron fist. Literally.

And so, this January, when I felt trapped again inside of my own mind, albeit without those external constraints, I began to write, but fifteen years later, it came in the form of a blog. Again, I needed to make connections with people, and I felt like my external life was a facade. And yes, I didn't want to worry anybody I knew by telling them , because if I did, then in my head, I would be a burden, and I would not be "easy" to be friends with. (Or "worthy" of being friends with???) Everyone has challenges; why would I add to those of my friends? Of course, my very special friends deserve every inkling of support and humor and comfort and fun that is humanly possible and I wish I could have been a person to bring that for them over this past winter. I have no idea whether I did; for in truth, I was miserable in my own mind. Interestingly, most people bought my happy act. I tried to hide my own personal misery. And I tried to act a-okay. Yet this was some a-okay that I didn't feel at fucking all. The only ACTUAL spots of being a-okay were while I was spending time with the very few people who - for lack of a better term - "got me" - yet they were the same people I wanted to least feel like a burden upon, the same people I cared about most, so ironically, I wouldn't talk about how fucking miserable I actually was.

So my second best journals have been from January to, say, March of this year. Before I escaped from the confines of my own mind, before I felt real again. And DAMN, does feeling real again feel good. And then, by large, I stopped writing in this blog. (Is that why so many great writers are tortured souls and all that? Because without effort, they get down to the depths of human emotions, emotions to which other people can relate, to a lesser extent? No - not to a lesser extent - to the extent of what they can see lingering on the skirt hems of their dark sides, of what they conceptually can see happening, happening on the side which they won't tip to, but that sometimes lurks there, in the subconcious, and then creates the attraction to the writing of those who actually put it out there?)

Anyway. This hiatus from blogging has just been another step in my life that I had to take. I had to re-enter the world of the real, of ME. And maybe this whole entry makes no sense, because it's veered in a few different directions, but it makes perfect sense to me. And also, for the next month and a half, I will have a lot of time to reflect and - yeah, to play (summer in new york city - there is nothing better). I AM SO READY FOR THAT!!! (Please rain stop, too!) I feel good! But I don't want to ignore the continual process of self-reflection in which this journal allows me to engage. I have to write during the good times and not just during the bad times.

Thank god I am not that junior high girl any more who wrote in her journals simply to validate her own identity. But you know what? I love that junior high girl, and I love her a lot. And if I could sit with her right now, I would hug her, and I would tell her - "hey, LM, You're going to be okay." Because she will. Because she is. She so is.