Expensive Gifts

I was depressed yesterday and broke someone's heart.  I worked and did not laugh, and when it was time to log off, I sat with my sister for the evening until my eyelids were so heavy I could not keep them opened.  I thought a lot about what other people were doing, one person in particular, and about the cruel games we play with each other.
It's all sort of ridiuculous and lonely, but we continue down this path called love, don't we?  I understand that a lot of people don't go through this, that a lot of people are just fine pretty much all the time, and that a lot of people are happy and don't worry about half the shit that goes through my head. 
But I know that this can turn into a positive thing, that all this heartache and miscommunication and turmoil and whatever else I could call it will sooner or later be over with, and that something very beautiful, perhaps poignant and heartbreaking, can come from it.  I picked up a book about creativity, a workbook, last night but I was too tired to read more than a couple of pages, and way too tired to start on an exercise.  I fell fast asleep with the book in my hand and the pen somewhere under the covers.  I hope I don't have ink stains on my sheets - they were an expensive gift from someone that can't afford expensive gifts.  I makes me think about the price we pay for certain things.  I just hope it's worth it.

To tell you the truth...

I haven't been writing.  I haven't been doing much of anything, besides drinking and feeling sorry and pathetic and thinking dangerous thoughts that I try to avoid, thoughts like suicide by sleeping pills, that great long sleep, and then chasing down projects when I've not even completed ones that I've been working on for years, such as this book, and giving up on so many things all together.  I want to be hopeful, of course.  I've been taking my pills, I've been trying to watch my drinking, I've been hoping to black out less.  I've been trying to get my mind in a place that is not so dark, so desperate, but it's been a challenge.  A daily struggle.  And I wonder if I'm just one of those people.  One of those that will always struggle, with everything, and a person that will never quite make it to happiness.  Of course I don't want to be that way.  Who does?
It's not like I'm unhappy all the time.  It's not like I don't have friends that I enjoy going out with, and it's not like I don't laugh.  It's that I'm haunted, as Q said, by something that I've yet to understand.
I've realized that I've fucked it up.  I threw away a lot of things that I didn't mean to throw away, and the only thing I can be thankful for is that I didn't burn any bridges.
So I've been reading, detoxing, sleeping, stretching.  Walking miles and zoning out.  Shedding skins, shedding pounds, picking at my haggard fingernails.  Deciding what's right and what's wrong and picking up the pieces.  I am forever picking up pieces.
I haven't written because I fear what's inside me.  Or what's not inside me.  I gave up on the dream of writing.  I'll admit it.  I had to give it up; I don't have the stamina to keep moving forward.  I would still love it, that corner university office packed with books and sweet, early morning light.  But I don't think that's in the cards for me.  I don't think I'll ever get there.  Instead, I'm doing another thing I love, selling vintage clothes.  I'm focusing on something new to take away from the heartache and the pain.
I've been trying to explain it to Q but he doesn't trust me.  I can understand why.  He is unwilling to budge and I know that I am stuck here, at least until my troubled mind is healed.
I was thinking the other day about what would have happened to me if this was another time, and another place.  I wouldn't be in the free world, that's for sure.  They would lock me up again, make me stay somewhere drafty, where I could pad around all day and read the same cheap novels over and over again.  That wouldn't last long.  It couldn't.  I wouldn't let them kill me slowly, when I could just do it myself.
The other night, well, weeks ago, I sat at a bar drunk from binge drinking shitty beer all night.  I was trying to explain to M that I wasn't going to make it to 30, and I was crying but trying to pretend like I wasn't crying.  M couldn't understand why I'd think that, how I could let myself think that, as if I had a choice.  Explaining depression is impossible, at least for me, and it especially was that night.
I always thought I could write myself right, but it looks like I'll need several years of therapy and hospitalizations before I can even consider being "right".  No wonder Q is afraid.  How can I make him not afraid?  How can I remind him of our sleepy mornings, of that sweet and supple bond between two people that know each other well, of a love that seemed so unbreakable?
Isn't life supposed to be one great story?  Filled with climaxes and changes of heart and long periods of lull, where time stretches and skips seemingly at the same time?
Discovery and recovery.  I need you.

I am going to write a love letter.

I'm frazzled.  I cried this morning.  I wanted to just go back to bed or punch a hole in the wall.  But things are better now, and I told someone that I loved them because I was really thankful for their kindness during my hysteria, and I thought, well, he may think that I'm saying it just because I'm stressed, which I kinda was, but maybe it's true too, and how will he know?  He won't, ever, because I say almost everything in jest.
Then I remembered that I'm to write a love letter for a friend of a friend's project about love letters.  I don't know many of the details, but I thought, I can do this.  I always do this.  Just the other day I found a four-page handwritten love letter to someone (that I now loathe).  It was in a box of crap my mom had packed up from my old closet in her house.  She's turning that room into a craft room and needs the space.  I didn't even read the letter.  I threw it in the recycle bag, but then took it out, thinking that one day I might be able to read it and laugh.  It's been about seven or eight years and I'm not laughing about it yet.

I could write about a lot of things, too many things, but the thought of writing them all out makes me a little depressed, knowing that's it's just another pretend thing in my imagination, knowing, and hating, that this love letter will never be seen by the eyes of the person it is for.  Once again.

shit.

So it's been a while, and a lot of things have happened in my writing life. Well, in life all around, I suppose, and that's probably why the writing life finally starting happening because things were so weird and shitty on the personal end.  That seems to be the best time for me to write, when I'm heartbroken or unhappy or just plan bored with my life.
To begin...the big or the small first?  Let's go small and work our way up.

• I finished Highsmith's book and found it pretty good.  I was hoping there would be a little more instruction.  Instead it was more like a promotion for her other books and how she used certain aspects of the suspense genre.  No matter, I at least was motivated to write while and after reading her book, and I got one good idea for a radio drama from it.
• I am currently writing a radio drama that I've sort of fallen in love with.  I'm planning on writing a short story about it.  It's about a woman whose husband is driving her absolutely mad (story of my life?) and she kills him (by accident?  intentionally?).  That's the gist of it, anyway.  I've learned some pretty quirky things about murdering people, and it gives me a great excuse to indulge in all those true crime murder shows I love so much.
• The screen play at the moment is on hold.  I just got Deemer's book about screenwriting and I'm looking forward to cracking that baby open this weekend.
• I've been submitting for the first time in about two or three years, and a lit mag, Wilderness House Literary Review, is picking up one of the shorts, "Jimmy Gorski", from the collection.  While I was thrilled that they are going to run it, I was filled with mixed emotions as the editor's email was a little biting.  It read, (spelling errors are his): "We'll run it even thought I thought the ending was a bit of a cop-out for you as a writer. You can do better."  In my email back to him I didn't know quite what to say...
• I might read some journal entries for Mortified DC.  I finally got an email back from them and they said they are interested. Alex might be performing there as well...and for that I cannot wait.  It would be so awesome to read on stage with her.
• Now, for the BIG news: I finished my collection!  And I mailed it to Craig Lesley for review.  That is a huge weight off my shoulders, and it's allowed me to start on new projects and to think about life outside that collection.  (Though, I have to admit, it's hard to get away from them.  I don't feel like my life with Eddie and Margaret is done yet...we'll see.)

So I will keep on trucking.  I've been go through some hard shit lately but I guess it's better for me creatively speaking than when things were good.  C'est la vie...c'est la vie.

Drinking to keep from heaving.

I'm not as young as I used to be, and I don't bounce back like I used to.  I'm learning this now, as my organs are actually aching after a week's drinking binge from the latest heartache.  This one is a doozy.  But it's forced me to think about things, my goals and ambitions and just what the hell I'm doing, and it's forced me to get some things done.  I finished editing four stories this past weekend.  Good job, me.  I didn't want to.  I wanted to sit around and feel lonely and upset and watch Law & Order and sip on yet another glass of wine.  And I did do that for a while, until I got bored with Law & Order (did they change the show's writers, or something??) and I talked to some friends, one in particular, that wondering just why WHY I'm not moving forward.  Who's holding you back?  You?  YOU?
Yes, me.
So I'm working on changing that, and it's making me feel a little bit better about my situation.  I mean, not really, at all, but it's making me think of something else, and that's what I really need.
Four stories, down.  Ready for submission.  I sent one story off yesterday to a small, online literary journal, The Meadowland Review. 
I finished reading a collection of short stories by Lee Smith and that made my heart feel better in two ways.  One, I love Lee Smith.  I hope to meet her one day.  I have no idea how that would happen, but that would be the best thing I can imagine.  I wish she was still teaching writing classes.  How great would that be??  Ok, ok, I need to stop wishing for what can't happen.  Two, I noticed some discrepancies in her stories.  Like, a character has brown eyes then a few page later he has these gorgeous blue eyes.  She also did some fun experimenting with her stories and not all of them worked.  I thought, well, if Lee can do it, it's ok.  It happens to everyone.  Not everything is the most amazing thing ever....isn't that what they always say?
I also spent Saturday night hanging out with my only writing friend in Charlotte.  (I really need to meet some people, but I'm terrified of putting myself out there.)  We drank some beers at this kitschy pseudo-redneck bar and talked about our writing goals.  She is considering going to writing school.  She's working on a screenplay.  She already has someone interested in buying her screenplay (yes, that was a dagger for me).  We agreed to meet up some time and talk more about writing and to workshop our stuff.  I hope that we actually do because I need something like that.
In other news, I started on a novel by T.R. Pearson, Off for the Sweet Hereafter.  I'm planning on starting Wallace Stegner's On Teaching and Writing Fiction.  I read a little bit of Stegner's book in grad school, but it will be good to focus on it intently and apply it to my writing life now that I have some sort of direction. 
Ok, no more drinking.  Time for working.

Working on writing, but still not writing.

I finished Miriam Gershow's first novel, The Local News,  the other day.  It was amazing, and I immediately handed it off to a good friend of mine because I liked it so much.  What I particularly enjoyed about this book is that I met Miriam when I was running a reading series for Portland State University, and that she told me that she was able to find an agent with a collection of short stories.  This is unusual and encouraging for someone like me.  Soon I will shop out this collection.  Hopefully I will have the same luck as Miriam.

I re-read a short story I wrote a year or so ago (maybe longer) and I'm feeling more encouraged, like, why did I think that this was so bad?  Why did I give up?  And then, ok, what can I do about this now?

Back to Miriam's book....I also appreciated that she's slightly older...mid to late thirties, I believe, and this is her first book.  I (for some reason) keep pushing myself to hurry up, that I'm falling behind, that I missing out on something, that I'm not trying hard enough and I'll never get to where I want to be going....but there's no reason for that.  I'm just holding myself back, paralysing myself with these shitty thoughts of failure and (self) disappointment.

So I'm feeling slightly better.  More encouraged.  Convinced, I suppose, that I can do it, that I do have what it takes, deep down, and that I need to stop freaking myself out and holding myself back.

What I really need to do is to stop comparing myself to my writer friends.

On another note, I've been reading Lee Smith's colleciton of shorts: Me and My Baby View the Eclipse.  It's refreshing reading some Lee again.  My voice is so similar to hers and that makes me feel encouraged because I respect her so much.  If she can do it, surely I can too, yes?  Yes.

I'm making lists for myself.  Going to get things done.  Stop falling in love and fucking around and buckle down, put on a pot of strong tea, and get to typing.  Edit that pile of MSs sitting on my nightstand, do the research about the chapbook, submit to lit journals.  Do it!  I have to push myself.  This is one of the hardest parts about being in Charlotte instead of being in a writing city like Portland.  I don't have a lot of motivation and I have too many excuses.  I'm always looking for a way out when I should be rattling my keys, finding my way back in.

I've been gone for too long.

Ok, so I've been distracted.  I've been in love with wine and nights watching TV with a friend, sitting outside before the summer heat really kicks in, talking about our nation's death penalty and the current crisis in the Gulf, thinking about future plans, still never really knowing if this is it.  Still not knowing much of anything.
Meanwhile my other writer friends are moving gracefully ahead and beyond me and I wonder if I will ever catch up.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.  Chasing a dream is hard work, and not for the weak of heart like me.  Time to open a vein and start writing again.