carpe diem

For the past year or so, I’ve been trying to write a book.

It is not going well.

When I try to write about my life, the words come out like they’re being drug through tar. They come out one at a time, requiring gargantuan, immense effort. And even when I’ve collected what feels like enough, when I’m sweating and my chest is heaving and I’ve been at it for hours, I assess my work and find a measly pile. Not enough to form sentences. Not enough to make sense of it all. And to make matters worse, they’re all caked with dirt and most of them are unintelligible.

And yet… the yearning to write about myself keeps me up at night. I catch myself thinking about writing and it always happens to be 11:11, like the universe is trying to do her part to convince me I’m headed in the right direction, to keep going.

I’m reading Glennon Doyle’s new book, Untamed. I can tell that when it’s finished, it will sit on the shelf on my desk to join the other 2 books I have to lay eyes on every day to remind myself who I am: Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel, and Big Magic by Liz Gilbert. All 3 women have taken their truths, every last bit of their guts and shame and pride, and spilled them out for the world to see. All week Glennon has been telling me (via her book) that I can do hard things, that my truth is worth telling, that listening to my Knowing is all that I need.

I took all that energy and inspiration, and I sat down yesterday and… wrote my book. For 3 hours, while my son napped, I typed and I typed and I typed. This is not new; I have spent many afternoons this way, fervently typing, running after some kind of muse. When I’m finished though and look back at what I’ve written, it’s garbage. That’s not me being modest, it’s me being frustrated that despite my best efforts, this work just does not want to come out of me. Maybe just not yet, and maybe not ever.

I was pissed. I then sat down to write about how pissed I was that I can’t write. And the thing is, when I’m writing about NOT writing, the words just flow. When I’m writing “casually",” like in this blogging format, so much pours out of me. It is endless. And it finally occurred to me that maybe the universe (and Glennon) are trying to point me in a different direction. Maybe trying to share all of myself at once in one big book about my life is… too much for me right now. I thought I was ready to share every detail of my life with reckless abandon, but I may not be.

Sometimes I convince myself none of it was real. And if it was, none of it could really be as bad as I remember it. I feel nothing like the shell of a girl I was at nineteen, the girl I keep trying to write about, who didn’t know how to fill herself, only to slice into herself and bleed out any goodness that collected. It sounds dramatic, but she was dramatic. I hate admitting there is no “she” -- it’s me who has done and been all these terrible things. To myself, no less. There is no boogeyman in my story, no one hiding under my bed. To take ownership of my stories is to admit all the horrible things I’ve done. I think I might need to practice bit by bit.

I thought I was surrounded by villains back then, but 10 years of perspective has taught me I was the poison. I was in all the wrong places at all the wrong times with all the wrong people, but I put myself there. I ran straight into the fire, not as an act of bravery, but as a means to let myself burn out for good. There were sharks circling, but I’m the one who cut myself open to make sure they could taste the blood.

I begged people to swallow me whole. I all but crawled inside their mouths, thankful even for the ones who chewed me up and spit me out. It was the only way I knew how to feel. I was enchanted by so many people, under so many spells. That time is a funhouse of mirrors to me, and though I understand most of the devilish reflections are my own, I must also someday accept that not all of them are. To tell my stories are to tell theirs, too, and that doesn’t seem like my right. To cut their stories out of my own would leave me with scraps, and what if it’s then not interesting enough to share?

I once took a private plane to Santa Fe for the weekend, on a whim, because I was invited for a casual overnight trip. I drank house sangrias at oceanside restaurants, laying my drunk head in the laps of women I only ever wanted to love me, while they stroked my hair and called me Sweetypea. I toasted cheers with expensive Saki bombs at tables filled with men and women nearly twice my age, ever the manic pixie dream girl who brought an air of fuck it to all these gatherings. I was like walking permission to do drugs all night and mix jungle juice at 3am, even though I’d never done those things before I met them. I lived in a gorgeous, rustic loft (rent-free) where I did nothing but puke my brains out and starve myself 24/7 until I was no longer welcome. I totaled my car -- a gift from my great-grandparents who were no longer well enough to drive -- in an accident that was completely my fault and injured two people. I lured in so many boys who had no business being with me, and I fell in love with all of them, with anyone who would look at me for long enough. I was given the world over and over and over again and each time, I pillaged it all and burned it to the ground without a second thought.

To come clean is to admit what I’ve done. It’s accepting the selfish, toxic person I’ve been, and also that all the wings I was being taken under, broken bird that I was, were just as broken. There was never any shelter there at all, and that’s been just as difficult for me to come to terms with. But it’s been 10 years. I’m tired of dragging this trunk of skeletons around -- moving it around my house, decorating it with table runners and pretty candles and sparkling tchotchkes in an effort that no one will ever ask what’s in it.

Telling the stories feels like summoning the devil. It’s a dance I know I’ve got to do, but it’s not one I look forward to. It takes so much trust -- trust in my own narrative, in my own ability to tell these stories accurately and fully. Trust in the people I love who will read them; trust that those people will still look me in the eye and love me despite it all. Trust that the people whose stories I must tell along with mine will forgive me. Trust that I can articulate the thorns I’ve left in the sides of people who never deserved my scarring, just as much as I can the pain from the thorns I’m still trying to dig out of my own ribcage. Trust that anyone will give a fuck enough to even care what I have to say, to hear what I have learned and how far I’ve come.

Cuz that’s the problem, isn’t it? I can’t talk about my victories, my successes, my soaring highs, without explaining my cavernous lows. I don’t make sense without one or the other. I’m not a whole person without the existence of both the ying and the yang, but I’ve spent ten years scrubbing out the darkness so everyone would see only the light. But I’m no more pure light than I was pure darkness, and one can’t exist without the other. I am carrying a towering mountain of secrets like pebbles and there is simply no way to set them down one at a time. If it’s time to drop even one, it’s time to drop them all.

So, this. THIS here is what I think I’m being called to do. Just chatting. Sharing. Casually.

And WWGD? (What Would Glennon Do?) Well, I hear that she sat herself down at her computer every single morning to type and type and type and then hit “submit” on whatever came out, and it was there she finally met herself again. So here we go. G, this one’s for you.