I Feel Like A Cracked Coconut

Pearl is buried.  Philip is on a business trip.  My mother, not usually much for babysitting kids took Max overnight last night so that for the very first time in 8.5 years I was home alone.  No husband.  No kid.  Just me.  And it was weird.  I wrote.  I know, you're SHOCKED.

I can't tell you how much I appreciate the encouragement you have given me about writing a book.  I actually really needed it.  I feel like a coconut that has been cracked.  I'm spilling all over the place and it's sticky, messy, lush, and kind of painful to be cracked open when I swore I would be hermetically sealed for all eternity.

So much for promises.

My mom has decided that this is just one more scrap of evidence that I am bi-polar like her.  Because I've been writing at every possible moment I can.  Because I stay up all hours at it. Because it has become a mission.  A meditation.  A lesson in not deciding that I'm not capable of something when I can't possibly know that. 

Since I diagnosed my mother as bi-polar years before she would agree to see a psychologist, and since I have had the privilege of being good friends with not one, not two, but at least THREE people with bi-polar disorder, and since I have been reading about mental illness since I first really wished the white-coats would come and fetch me and thought straight-jackets were the height in elegance, and furthermore (I realize how many "and"s I'm stringing out here) FURTHERMORE- since I was assessed by my very own handpicked psychologist (Dr. Jay Judine, an excellent man, RIP) and was found decisively to NOT be bipolar....I take leave to vehemently disagree with her.

You answered my question and it completely fits with what I know in my heart.  I have been preparing for this project my whole life.  I am only doing what I am supposed to do.  Writing a book and getting it published are two very different matters.  I know that I was meant to write the book I am writing right now.  I have been trying, ineffectually, to do it for years.  A whole lot of years.   Things sometimes have to coalesce first.  To lead to the point of ignition.

I would like a quiet and slow life.  I would like to not be doing so much right now.  I would like to sit in my luscious little box of poppies and just dream myself into summer with weeding, cooking, and other fun projects.  I would like to not have any fires flaring up in my little oasis of calm, but sometimes we can't choose our moments.

I have so far written 51,091 words covering 99 pages.  I've written more than that, but that is what I have so far that's worth the effort of rewriting.  I'm not going to be coy, I am excited.  It's coming together in a way I have never been able to coax my work before. 

I think it's entirely possible that when this is finished I will be done. Done reaching like that.  Stretching outwards to the stars.  It's hard fucking work and this story is the one, the one that is making all the sap come to the surface of the skin of my life.  Issues, thoughtfully buried, are rising from the soil of my brain like irrepressible mushrooms.  The dark, the light, the unexpected.  I'm both scared and also feeling strong. 

This is a season of epiphanies.

I've been completely taken by surprise.  I really do hate surprises and part of me is really impatient and annoyed.  Why now?  Just when things were calming down.

But it feels like maturing.  It feels like reaching something I was never tall enough for before.

I don't actually know how I will finish this.  I have no idea how long this road is or where it ultimately leads.  I only know that I am following instinct here and my instinct has rarely led me far from the point of truth.

It may look manic to some.  It may seem unbalanced to my mother.  It may seem crazed to you too.  You are entitled to your view. 

I look at it as the passion that it takes to make something beautiful enough to be shared and remembered.  I see it as professional ardor.  I see it as the necessary drive to accomplish the impossible. 


Special Note to Estes (I think that is your name?): you left the loveliest comment on one of my posts and I accidentally deleted it and I'm terrified that I may have accidentally banned you from commenting (movable type is a BITCH), and if you read this I need you to know that it was so unintentional- and if you email me I can try to be sure I haven't done that.  You called my piece "lyrical." and it almost made me cry with happiness to hear such a lovely word used about my work!