The cycles are (obviously) vicious again. Monthly, now, following the moon, and even knowing what it is hasn’t seemed to stop the shock or lessen the impact. Being sucked down into the ideation abyss, even briefly, is an experience I’m not really willing to accept. Understanding goes a long way, but goddamn I’m not prepared to talk myself out of death or into life every several weeks. Making moves to address and correct this as best I can, I’m not sure what else is left to me beyond that point. Pushing back into creative expression, digging outlets out of bedrock so I’m not stuck in these paths.
I need new language for life. I need to read the books strewn about and re-learn how to evoke the imagery compelling me. My mouth is too dry. There are only so many ways to abuse the same six words, the same overcooked concepts and symbols. Speaks to the limits of my creativity, doesn’t it? Still a woman trapped behind these lines. Still fire, still milk and honey, still a throat full of starlings, an eruption of light. I don’t mind that I am these things, but there is so much more inside each of them than the words I have can allow. When I came home I began to chase art as a language instead of letting it use me. Pretty sure I did that one wrong. I’m still searching for the moments, however passively, when I can let it run through me. A sifting of sorts, hands in the river sand, accepting the current as it whirls and dips around me.
The weight I carry has no place here, the same way it had no place on the shoulders of those who’ve loved me. I’m looking at myself when I say that, as well. The feeling I’ve had the last several years of needing to pull my self into myself remains persistent. This most recent devastation was inevitable, and I knew that. I believe one of the biggest faults on my end was just the fucking weight of it. The incessant pressure my existence exerts on everything I keep close. I had a moment earlier where I felt closer to the source of it, sussing out the tiny, common thread that undoes the whole tapestry. The world keeps interrupting, but the lesson’s there. The thing I fucked love up with is teaching me how to fuck my kids up less. I’m repeating myself with that, though.
I don’t think I’m sorry for being self-centered anymore. Not like this, not in this space, not in any of my creative/generative spaces. This is their function. This is mine. I’d like to revel in that, shamelessly. Revel in myself thoroughly. But god I do need new words. The urge to grow is pushing through my bones. Big stretch, you know? I have to become good enough.