in praise of drunken blogging

It’s become too tight in here. I need elbow room and stand room and sing room. Drinking room. The delete key should be flicked off the keyboard. No edits. More wine. A lot of writers write their first draft with their hearts, the second with their heads. Aside from its beating, I don’t know what that heart feels anymore. It’s been edited out, scratched off the page. Red ink in lieu of blood. There needs to be a lot more drunken blogging in my life. Where I can slip out and be a braver kind of weak.

In lieu of the sauce, I’m gonna blast the music and tune out my inner naysayer. Play it loud and feel it proud. I feel so out of touch with feel. Like I’ve been allowing your feel to prevail over mine. Yours is heavier and more articulate. Mine I can deal with another time. That’s how it feels, only we never really get to mine until I’ve stopped feeling anything at all.

Do you know that feeling when you’ve just returned home from an unreal vacation? You open the door and the colors of your home seem drabber than you remember. Bills. The to-do lists. Even if the dishwasher has been unloaded and everything is in its place, there’s still unpacking to be done. You finally climb into bed and think, so this is it now, huh? I have vacation depression, only I haven’t left the state.

If you lean into the why, if you inspect the feelings and turn them over to check out their undersides, it’s hard to turn back. It’s like when I was in therapy after my divorce, wanting so much to figure out who I was and what I needed, but the more I delved, the more I discovered that I didn’t like what I saw. Awareness. That shitty little step doesn’t let you live the same way again. There’s no going back.

So instead of torturing myself with examination of these feelings, I’ll try to distract myself. Knee-deep in film study, in writing, in anything that will pick me back up into the play zone, where I’m my most joyful. I think I forget that sometimes. I need to fill my own damn needs and wants, to nurture and comfort myself. I need to go play.

Okay, so who’s convinced? Not it.

Feelings on strings
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COMMENTS:

  1. I feel you on holiday depression but you know what it made me think of, a few days before the end of the trip you get the feeling that your skin is a little too sticky and the booze a bit too watered down and even with all the bills and the lists, you really can’t wait to get back. Go play – skip, dance, sing. Just don’t forget to come home.

  2. I had a therapist who would say: ‘why’ is the booby-prize… and then we would deal with the current state of my head/heart.

  3. My vacations are with my beloved family and sometimes I even get to see my 3 children (!) and I can’t wait to get back behind the doors of HOME; just me, the husband, the dog. They know me best, love me best, and all the others want a person I am no longer. Heck, I can’t wait to get back to WORK. Where I’m respected, allowed space, asked for help, given encouragement. I used to be louder, more bodacious, careless; I thought I was so funny, money was never tight. Now I am quieter, more insecure in groups, happy in intimate groups, and everyone asks, “Are you ok? What’s wrong with you?” Frustrating because the louder me was frowned upon. At home and at work, we laugh together, I’m not scrutinized. I miss the old me sometimes too, but this is now and and there’s no going back. I finally got to go to this last reunion with my husband and I thought I would feel again that outrageous confidence. But I could not wait to get home. This is the new reality and I have some mental adjusting to do.

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