I've spent a lot of time thinking of things I want to write in here. I've spent a lot of time looking over things I've been writing for the past ten years. I've been wondering where that drive went, where my need to create and document and simply put pen to paper disappeared to. My favorite class in college was a Creative Non-Fiction class I took a few years back. Nothing was harder and, yet, more satisfying than writing about your very own history in the most beautiful sentences you could muster. I remember all the people in that class. Mostly I remember their faces when they told their stories; the red-haired woman whose husband had died in a plane crash, the guy with the lazy eye who told stories of war and the funeral service he wanted for himself some day, the young girl with a mad love for dogs who told her story of her struggles with drugs and men who didn't deserve her-- all the stories of unsatisfactory parents and times of struggle, of nights spent in familiar places with familiar people. The stories I wrote killed me to write. And killed me to read aloud. I put my guts out there-- told things I'd never told anyone before-- about my family, my history, the deepest thoughts in my head and sharpest pains in my heart. I think this class did more for me than any amount of therapy or passing of time ever had. I realized that our stories have little do with us but everything to do with the people who interact with us. How their actions shaped our person. Few wrote about themselves alone; all wrote about being hurt and being loved, either too much or not enough, by other human beings. Haruki Murakami once wrote, in the novel Norwegian Wood, a passage that has stuck with me for the past decade. In it, the narrator is speaking to Midori speak about her past.--
"Do you think you weren't loved enough?"
She tilted her head and looked at me. Then she gave a sharp, little nod. "Somewhere between 'not enough' and 'not at all.' I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it-- to be fed so much love I couldn't take it anymore Just once. But they never gave that to me. Never, not once. If I tried to cuddle up and beg for something, they'd shove me away and yell at me. 'No! That costs too much!' It's all I ever heard. So I made up my mind. I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty-five days a year. I was still in Elementary school at the time-- fifth or sixth grade-- but I made up my mind once and for all."
It may not be what most people take from reading this but I took away that it was this lack of love that made Midori whole. In the pie-graph of her person, the lack of love filled the gap between "loved" and "pretty" and "gentle" and "woman" and everything else Haruki Murakami made her of. Not being loved filled her up and if she'd written her story, that would have come out. We write what we know and what we know is how other people make us feel.
I've heard that it's harder to create when you're happy. It seems like such a cop out but maybe that's why I haven't written in a few years. Or maybe I've just been distracted. Either way, my being happy and my ability to write are two things I aim to combine in this blog adventure. I want to find my roots again and document this sweet spot in life I've been sailing through. Like Midori, I don't think I ever felt enough love as a child from the people you're supposed to. I'm not saying it wasn't there but it wasn't shown to me. I was very rarely told I was loved. When I think of my grandmother, the overwhelming amount of love I felt from her seemed excessive-- wonderfully, sweetly excessive-- yet that's how most children should be loved from their family. Having missed out on that from most of the people around me, the feeling I get sometimes from seeing how much Jonathan loves me is so fucking wonderful. It doesn't seem real to me sometimes, not because it's not genuine or true but because sometimes I just can't see how it's physically possible to love someone so much, to leave your heart so vulnerable. It comes easy to me-- I love him more than I've ever loved anybody, I love him so much I get all fluttery and my stomach aches when I think of him. But me? He loves me even with all my faults-- my bitchy moods, my inability to share things, how freaking cranky I get when people don't want to hang out with me. He does. and I do. And someday we will in front of all the people who matter most-- me in a white dress and him in a suit. And someday we will make some crazy cute babies and I will tell them every single day how fucking special they are to me and how much of me is full of love for them. Because it's always better to love too much than love too little. Better safe than sorry. Better to grow up strong from love than strong from sorrow.
So maybe I can start to write again.
Maybe I can inch my way towards feeling full of love and full of words and full of things to share with you.
Maybe. Just maybe. I am really going to do my best.
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