I wrote a poem

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.