I wanted to start it with an apology that so many posts, in the past few years, have started with such an apology-- that every time I brush the dust of this medium, I feel compelled to establish to the loyal reading audience that I don't do this as much as I need to, as much as I should. I feel compelled to make some joke about how the loyal reading audience is comprised, nearly in its entirety, of future versions of myself. Ha ha, get it? You aren't reading this.
I mean YOU are. But they aren't. The people you picture reading it, the people you feel compelled to share with. They aren't out there. You're alone.
I wanted to start this post pointing out how all the recent posts-- you know, the dozen or so of them over the last five years or so, where once I wrote a dozen over the course of a week-- all start this way, because I am a shred of my former self. But, shred though I may be, it is a shred of integrity, and I like to approach these posts as a quest for for some kind of deeper truth. And truth, it would seem, requires accuracy-- or maybe it doesn't. Maybe we find deeper truth by figuring out which facts we've chosen to ignore. And figuring out why.
Nonetheless, I thought it best to go back and check. As it turns out, there was a cluster of posts-- if you can call it that, I think there's three of them-- that happened about this time last year. There's less dust on that mantle than I had imagined.
And none of them, it would seem, started like this. So I guess it's okay that this one does. One way or another, it would not have felt genuine to leave it out. And I like to approach these posts as a quest for some kind of deeper truth.
So here it is, the awkward opener, complaining about how I haven't written often enough, based on a dearth of content that's less dearth-y than I suspected, and the ever-present refrain of my awkward explanations of that. Which has apparently only been repeating in my head. It's new to you.
I mean...not to YOU. But to them. The ones that won't read this.
I wasn't going to write about how, in order to even get this far, I had to stick headphones in to drown out the sound of my two children, both in the room, in the background. I wasn't going to write about that, because one of them was supposed to be napping, and one of them was supposed to be neutralized by the alluring hypnotism of screens downstairs-- a strategy I relent to using too often, in my growing and all-encompassing guilt, when I want to accomplish things.
But not THESE things. Who has time for these things? Because if I'm going to let my oldest son become a zombie in front the television, then I'd better be doing it so I can get cleaning done. Perhaps paying bills. If it's writing, it had better be a play or a song or a press release, because I don't have time for self-involved bullshit, and I don't have time to even END this sentence, because my son hit his brother and then his brother-- my other son-- was crying, and I had to go to him, and I had to send the eldest downstairs and pick up the youngest and now this has become some giant run-on sentence about how I can't end a fucking sentence because I'm too busy to end a sentence.
Okay. That one is over now. But I'm still holding my son, the other one, the crying one, but he's not crying anymore. He's pointing at the screen, not being at all unpleasant, really, except that he's keeping me from my life's work and he almost just deleted the last two paragraphs. As if that would have been such a tragedy.
And that's what the post was originally supposed to be about. The post that this was just supposed to be an intro for. The fact that I don't think of him as my life's work. The growing and all-encompassing guilt of spending all my time regretting that I'm not writing on this more often, that I'm not spending more time on my creativity, on my mental health. On these pages that I have been filling up with self-involved bullshit for most of my life now, maybe as a proving ground for ideas to grow into something greater, maybe as much-needed therapy, maybe as a simply a way to hone my craft.
Or maybe, just maybe, because there's something in the sharing. All these years, I've felt shallow because I couldn't just write it in a diary, couldn't write for the love of the words on the page, but I had to reach out to you, loyal readers, because I must think I'm so important.
Maybe it's therapy, putting it out there for you to love or hate, convinced you're all indifferent to it, hoping against hope that some of you out there are not. Reaching out to the rest of the world with everything you have because all you want in life is to be loved, genuinely and without reservation, by the people who cared enough to take the time to find your secrets. By the loyal reader.
And I am. Because it's all future versions of me. And when I took the time to go back and re-read the dearth of entries...I still love her.
But I'm alone. Because you're not out there. I mean...YOU are. But they're not.
And maybe they would be if you had time to write it. And now you're going to trade the guilt of NOT parenting enough, not cleaning enough, not doing of anything you should be doing enough with the guilt of not doing THIS enough, because this is what you need to do, because this is the therapy and self-love and the human connection that you've been lacking for so many years, since the dearth first started. Things changed and become more private and more high-stakes and you couldn't take their judgment and you started hiding it all in song lyrics and vague hints at who you really are, because you're a mother and a wife and a professional now, and you can't risk being found out for what you really are.
But YOU still love you. Even when you hate you. Maybe they're not out there, but YOU are.
So, fuck it. Who cares if you're a wife and a mother and a professional? More than any of that, you're a writer. And yes, we'll be exploring the guilt that comes with that, of thinking of yourself as one thing more than another, and what that means for you and your children and all the people who judge you. But you're not going to come to any conclusions if you don't try.
I know well enough to know now this post will never be what it was meant to be when I first started. I know well enough to know that it will not morph into any of the posts I've meant to make over the last few months. But I am promising, here and now, to write those, and write them soon. The post that this should have been-- or, was going to be-- about why Sara Bareille's Waitress is not my favorite musical even though I so desperately want it to be. A post about the book "Where The Wild Things Are", and about grief. A post about living in the closet, against all odds, and taking steps to a more authentic expression of who I am, and what I am, and what that means.
So there's a preview for you, loyal reader, of the great and good and self-interested bullshit to come. Not that there's anyone here.
But I am.
On with it.
