strangled
Sometimes, they tighten around me until I almost can’t breathe. They squeeze me everywhere … from the inside, from without, and they’re utterly unrelenting. I occasionally manage to distract them, or to distract myself from them, perhaps, but it is always only a short respite before the pain returns, driven by the coiled, suffocating, constricting emotions.
It is like having an obsession in reverse. Instead of stalking my obsession, I run from it. I run hard and I run fast. I long for the ability to compartmentalize, to put things neatly away until I can handle them, to remain in control, steady, constant, and strong. I wish I could keep my worlds from colliding, put them in boxes with well constructed sides, impervious boxes that weather such things as time and trauma. There are chinks in mine, where things slip in and out, mingle with the inhabitants of my various other worlds until the sides give way like a New Orleans levee, and all my stuff mixes gleefully at the lowest point. There, it tends to find a level, and I can begin the process of repairing the breaks, putting everything carefully back where it belongs.
There isn’t a day in my life that goes by without something reminding me.
Loneliness is a funny thing. You can trick yourself into thinking you’re not lonely. You can surround yourself with friends, you can laugh at the really stupid person at work, you can plunge yourself into the world of raising your children and doing and going and doing some more for them, and you can hold up what you’ve accomplished at the end of the day and say, “Lonely people do not accomplish such things, Elise. You are vital and you are whole and you are happy.” But I’m not, and I wonder how long I can keep … well … not pretending, exactly.
Adjusting.
I don’t want to be cold about this, the way I am about everything else. I don’t want to manage it, don’t want to put it in a place where it no longer hurts, place it behind glass like a pretty knick-knack to which one can point dispassionately and say, “Why that’s a pretty knick-knack.” So it is either the horrible squeezing, choking, unrelenting pain … or the encroaching coldness.
Ultimately, there’s really no choice.
I tried to get back to the fiction. I try every single day. But I’ve lost that singsong rhythm with which I write, lost the magical way the words fall from my head and dance together to make my angels fly. I’ve lost a sense of innocence that helped me wrap my little depravities in gossamer threads and make the naughtiest girls seem sweet, and the cruelest sadists seem noble. My words are hard now, brittle, and they hurt me as i write them, and I’m tired, so fucking damn tired of hurting, that I kill the words and write only of my pain, or of things that don’t matter like ten things upon which you can rely. This used to be my place of solace, where I could write anything I liked. Not anymore. No. Not anymore. Too many eyes, too much to hide.
Strangled.
Damn, Elise. I’m saddened to read this, but at the same time not surprised. You’re a writer after all, and sometimes we feel things too keenly. There are no words to cozen you out of these feelings…were there, I’d have repeated them to myself ages ago just to stop banging my head against the cages on my brain and around my heart. I’ve spent half my life being with someone and yet alone and in lonliness. I’ve traveled half the world. Alone. I’ve achieved. Alone. I’ve been fucked up and screwed over. Alone. It doesn’t get easier, but one adjusts. And sometimes – just sometimes and just for a moment – it’s better that way. Most of the time, it just sucks.
Kaz,
Thank you for reading and understanding. And yes. It really just sucks.
elise
I could catch a handful of words and craft something beautiful and perfect and true in response to this … except …
I don’t think I’m anywhere near as strong as you think I am.
This is why they like us — those deep thinking, darkly twisted sadists — for our capacity to feel, and know, and hold, the anguish. They don’t take it in like we do. We take it for them. Even after they’re gone. And they love us for it. Even after they’re gone.
I have many middle names and one of them is Stubborn and one of them is Alone. And the first simply refuses to allow the second to drown. It has worked so far, though it does get rather messy at times ….
My middle names are “Distance” and “Poise.” They’re entirely related. They’re defenses. And I can’t channel them the way I do with nearly everything else.
It is ridiculous to love this way. Just ridiculous.
elise
In my mind, you are just on a break from writing. (sticks fingers in ears and starts singing off-key very loudly)
You could always start another blog – tell us all where it is by email. Or start writing (furtively – that’s the most fun) and someday we would see an angel-based series…
*seconds Sassy’s private-blog notion*
As for ridiculous love *sigh* it’s the only way I know …
Thank you, both. I’ve actually toyed with the idea of making this entire blog private and sending the password to those of you who read me regularly. But I’ve always liked that people I don’t know read me, I’ve always been unbelievably touched when someone comments or emails that they’ve been a long time reader, but something prompted them to comment on a specific post that really spoke to them.
That, and I’m stubborn. I just don’t feel as though someone stalking me, or someone reading me because they think I’m dating their ex-boyfriend I’ve never even talked to, fergawdsake, or … you get the picture. I don’t feel as though those are legitimate reasons to push me off my fucking blog.
~virtual glare at those of you who are glare-worthy~
And yet ~sigh~ here i am, feeling this way. You glareworthy people need to stop obsessing.
elise
Elise, you can’t ‘lose’ talent, in your case the ability to spin worlds and universes of words and thought and feeling – like the blood coursing through your veins, it is (at least from the perspective of a passionate reader of your talent), part of what makes elise elise.
But creativity and fluidity are capricious – the muses (like all the gods) are arbitrary and petty and magnificant, all at once, and will pick and choose when to bless … obviously, I’m not privy to your private life but there is obviously something going on and so much emotion can sometimes explode so outrageously that soudn itself is made silent …
but it is always just a pause in time …
and speaking as someone who has had blogs stolen, hacked and destroyed, this is YOUR space, damn it, you owe no one anything but what you choose to give and NEVER give that power to anyone else (I did and lost several years of writing).
May your spirit calm.
selkie,
You darling thing … thank you. I’ve been such a controlled person for years, really. And my recent private life, both family and romantic, have been or were filled with turmoil, some of which is self-imposed.
And some of which is/was … not.
I just get frustrated. And yes, I’ve decided nobody is taking this away from me, though I am still struggling with the need to censor myself, and I’m struggling with the reasons I’m sensoring myself. It pisses me off when I’m empathetic and don’t want to be. It pisses me off even more when my hands are tied. And it really pisses me off when I can’t indulge my mean streak.
Most of all, it pisses me off when I can’t write.
elise