I’ve Got Nothing

Even with Soma.fm’s Groove Salad playing a majority of the things I like, and with the sun shining so gloriously outside my window, and even after spending a few HOURS pouring over and pinning lots of thought-provoking images to my INSPIRATION folder …

I’ve got nothing.

No willpower, gumption, or words.

No ideas to help me edit the rest of my story. No desire to continue editing my story.

I know I’m not over Neal and his journey, but I am getting tired. Tired of trying to do the right thing, the right way, and in a manner that is pleasing to the reader.

What I’ve discovered over the years is that when inspiration strikes, it strikes hard, fast, and with lots of guts. I’m practically thrown into the art of writing as a result, too. An overwhelming compulsion to write that knows no bounds or sense of time.

It’s a marvelous feeling equivalent to getting high or having sex. I want it all, I want it now, and I want it to be the best it’s ever been.

I want it to last forever.

And then something called reality enters the picture. Suddenly the brakes are applied, the lights are turned up, the music stops, and …

I’ve got nothing.

This might explain Virginia Woolf’s quote about needing a private place in which to perform magic.

I’ve neither the money nor the tree house in which to escape the reality that is my life.

When summer comes, it is a slightly different story.

When summer comes there is the screened patio behind mom’s house, the heat of a sticky, hot day in Michigan, and my music to guide me (and my fingers).

At least until the next door neighbor steps out of their air con home and starts doing all the things non-writers like to do: talk on a phone, mull around a garage, make stupid sounds with a child, a child that likes to scream a lot, and their two lap dogs that like to bark a lot.

Even when I did have an income, though, and my own place, things weren’t as cozy and peaceful as they might seem.

In winter, it was too easy to hear what is going on in the two apartments sandwiched between mine, and the one above me.

In winter, in Michigan, you hear a lot of car horn honking, snow plow scraping, and foot stomping before doors are slammed and people start talking on phones or turn on their televisions.

I can’t wear headphones.

I can’t bring myself to turn up the stereo to 9 or 12, either. It just isn’t right regardless of the circumstances in which one would like to … exact their hearing revenge.

While in college, I used to escape via the designated QUIET spaces in the library. I can hear you laughing, dear readers. I can also hear laughter outside the closed door. And, the occasional person or people who barge in on my sanctuary and proceed to make that blasted phone call – or answer one every few minutes.

Public libraries still mind the SHH code, bless their feeble hearts, but not when a mother enters the picture with her little darlings in tow.

I suppose I could go on with this, but I need to admit to defeat in the form of an unwanted visitor to mom’s house over the weekend. My younger brother and his eleven-year-old daughter, my niece.

It was a disruption I could have done without, and for various reasons besides the loud, blatant disregard for my sense of privacy.

If you’ve stuck with me all this time in my journey to self discovery then you will know that I do not get along with any of my siblings. I don’t want to talk about that, though. Of them all (and there are 3) he is the biggest bane. And mom’s favorite. She will tolerate it all, but I can’t, and this is bad. Bad for my heart, which aches as a result, bad for my mind, which becomes distracted and then haunted by memories I’d rather weren’t available at all. Bad for my creative flow because like lyrics in a song, one distraction is usually all it takes to knock me out of writing and into something that isn’t.

It reminds me how pitiful and useless I’ve become, and that I don’t have a life anymore – at least not my own. I’m subject to the whims, likes, dislikes, and desires of another. ME has fallen by the wayside and not by choice, but that is irrelevant.

So, I dwell.

Not on my writing or the story, but on my life. A life I didn’t create by design but by circumstance, and we all hate that word.

So, I’m trying to get it back by writing.

I’m desperate to find myself; my voice, and my reason for being in this world.

I can only hope that the answer is to write. It’s all I’ve got left to give, so I am hopeful it is what I’m meant to be doing with the remainder of my time here.

It isn’t that I don’t believe in God, because I know He exists. I just walked away from all things religious, and maybe because of everything that happened to send my life spiraling into another hell, not hell itself. I grew up in hell, I lived hell from as far back as I can remember.

But, no, I never experienced war, mutilation, incest, rape, torture, or anything I can think that would be considered far worse than the things I’ve gone through. I’ve still gone through hell.

This third round of hell better not be the Dante tier, though, or … I don’t know how to end this sentence.

I should be above everyone and think outside the box when it comes to dysfunctional antics and ignorance, yet I don’t. Not because I’m lower than the low or vindictive or whatever. I simply choose not to enter the fray … anymore.

I’m tired of being burned, abused, used, talked down to, treated as less than worthless, and then cast aside at whim.

Religion might not be for me, and trusting anyone may never enter the picture again. I will never find true love in this lifetime yet continue to want to write about it so that at least a small part of me can … believe.

Demons suck, and yet they sometimes make awesome bit-part or leading characters in a novel.

Mental blocks suck, especially for the creative, and yet we always end up finding our way even in the darkest of hours.

Accomplishment is the equivalent of dining with the Communion of Saints, and yet just as elusive for some – even those who are established.

So, during this momentary disruption I zoned out on Japanese Anime and Korean drama, with a little bit of Vikings, Top Gear, Tim Gunn, and the Season 4 opener of Game of Thrones tossed in for the sake of variety.

It wasn’t all bad, really.

Yeah … I’ve still got nothing. 😦