On life

I figured out what my spirit animal is. A firefly. I appear. I disappear. I appear. I disappear. I…

It’s difficult to explain why I didn’t write for so long. I started many sentences, never could finish them. Like thoughts that can’t be completed. Then I stopped trying. Distance. Rebellion. Change.

It’s just as difficult to explain why I am writing now. I’m not sure what it brings. But I’ve said it since the very beginning, I’m doing this for myself first and foremost. I am not here to please, I am not here on demand. I am certainly not here to win a medal of assiduity.

What is this disordinate narrative? Well I guess it’s me. All of it is me. The voice in my head, the one scrambled in notebooks, the one I speak out loud, the one that gets published on this blog. What is life but a long fragmented, reinvented, interrupted, continued monologue? Or maybe I’ve watched too much TV. Perception and experience channeled.

This year so far has been incredibly hard on me. Past, present and future are battling it out like some wicked threesome wrestling match. I’m being confronted with challenge after challenge, no detail too small to bring up a shitstorm, no impact too banal to be mistaken for noise. I’ve dug up the ugliest feelings, the nastiest habits, the deepest despair, the roots of my innocence, the layers of my guilt. History, ancestors, triggers. Realities, circumstances, destiny. I’ve been working. I’ve been bingeing. I’ve been sick. I’ve been exercising. I’ve been drinking. I’ve been crying. I’ve been trying. I’ve been giving up. I’ve been caffeinating. I’ve been sweating. I’ve been thinking.

So now what? Now this again. Wanting to mark time. Wanting to hear myself speak. Trying to wrangle a bounty of ephemeral with my magic lasso again.

It’s just not gonna be like I thought it was gonna be. When is it ever. I had such a plan, I shoulda known right there it was too much of a plan to ever come to be. The fact that I still believe I can follow plans is endearing. Cute, like a pink ribbon or a stitched monogram. I keep trying to make myself one but coloring books are just not my thing. The minute I draw the lines first, I know I won’t be filling them, no matter how clever or bright or sharp the lines turn out.

I’ve been calling it that but this is not a project. This is my life. I can try packaging it any which way I want, it’s always going to spill over. It’s always going to run dry. It’s always going to be brand new. It’s always going to repeat itself. It’s always going to make perfect sense and be perfectly incomprehensible.