I wrote a poem. Not
shocking, I love writing, I love poetry.
When I fell in love with B for the first time a million years ago I
learned how to write poetry. It was my
way to process love and loss and high school and my parents divorce and
eventually break-ups and rape and family issues. I learned how to process what
was in my heart using the most beautiful words I could find. I learned that
sometimes very ugly things can be understood in language and rhyme schemes and
specific verse format. I learned to take words that weren't verbs and make them
gerunds. I learned that tear stained pages were a good first draft of
anything. I learned that sitting in a
classroom reading what amounted to my journal was brutal and hard and
exhilarating. I learned that I have a
voice, it's funny and sarcastic and bittersweet and from what I've heard,
relatable. I learned that words are my thing. I love them, I love turning a
phase in a new and interesting way.
What's been interesting to me the past few
months is that I haven't been able to write about the breakup. I have written
about my parents, I've written about feather mandalas, about crabapple trees
and my grandmother but I hadn't been able to write about him, until recently
that is. I thought I was feeling better, days will go by-ok hours, without
thinking of B. And then it hits me again, he's gone and I reach for my pen and my pink leather hand made poetry journal. In writing so much anger comes out, so much hurt that I'm left breathless and weak. But the
only thing I know to do is to keep reaching for my pen and paper. That's another odd thing. I always write my
blog on the Mac, but with poetry I always have to use a pen and paper, it's a
mental block for me, I have to have that physical connection to the pen for it
to feel true to me. I can feel things
getting better, this whole feeling the feelings BS thing is kinda for the birds,
but it works. It's also not for the faint of heart, it takes guts and moxie to
own how you feel. For example today was
not a great day, Sunday's never are for me (note to self, work on loving
Sundays) so today I have had moose tracks ice cream, powdered donuts and
oatmeal-essentially I’m going with healthy today, hitting all the food groups.
I talked to my therapist and sometimes this happens, old coping skills come
back up and seem to be the only way to deal, and today that was my day. I
needed an old coping mechanism. And now
I'm deciding to go with the new coping mechanism so I wrote a poem.
I write because I
have to. I've heard writers say that for years and I never understood that
until now. I write not because I want people to hear me, I write because I want
to understand. That's something I've
heard from other writers too, they want to understand. We want to understand our world and our place
in the world. We want to understand our
hearts and how they work and if something that we've discovered helps someone
else then it's a wonderful thing but if not then maybe I understand something
new. And isn't that what our journey
through all the stars is about, learning and understanding something new? Or
maybe that's just the perspective of a poet and a dreamer.
I wrote a poem
today.
