“The tears fall, they’re so easy to wipe off onto my sleeve, but how do I erase the stain from my heart?”

There is an immense sadness I feel – nothing specific where I can say that something has made me feel sad, just a general feeling of unsettled melancholy from which I cannot seem to break free. I reached out to two people yesterday before I collapsed into my bed rather early last night, and they each offered good advice respective to the questions I posed to them. Some of this is of course more of a feeling of isolation related to working from home and always feeling as tho I’ve been perpetually chained to my computer and locked away in my office for the world to simply forget about – and maybe that’s more the feeling I have; that I’ve been forgotten. Somehow left behind as the world kept turning under me.

Tho as I evaluate these feelings, I can’t escape the idea that this is all related to a larger sense of moving back to center and finding myself clicking into alignment with the universe around me – as if this period of adjustment isn’t so much related to the world, but rather, to myself.

I asked one person the question; Why am I doing this?

She was most kind in her response and suggested that I simply write for myself and not worry so much about feeling connected to others. This has always been my philosophy, so the idea of that isn’t so much the anathema that it might be to someone else. I find ample ways to occupy myself and I find my connections wherever they present themselves – but perhaps this is more related to feeling disconnected from a specific thing or person and I’m simply amplifying that feeling and projecting it onto things which aren’t necessarily related. Hard to say for sure.

A long time ago… I used to burn my journals. I still keep a handwritten diary; writing things there which I would never dare or want to share with anyone else. Those words occupy my private sanctuary. Once a journal was filled with my words, I would hold a ceremony of sorts and burn the pages… watching the paper curl and crisp as the flames licked around my carefully scripted sentences; all of my thoughts being consumed by the elements – fire consuming paper fed by air extinguished by water and returned to the earth.

All as it should be.

It’s been some time since I’ve held a burning ceremony – but perhaps it’s time to do so again. I would always feel better after a burning, especially if my diary was filled with painful things as my most current diary is now. Perhaps it’s time to let these things go.

I asked another person: Do you ever get grumpy about the whole thing?

She was also most kind in her response – and while she isn’t in my close circle, she has a considered understanding of the medium; both the positives and the negatives, so I do value her input. Not at all surprising, she too has been feeling rather grumpy about the whole prospect of sharing one’s words this way. I think anyone who feels a connection to their words who decides to share suffers this same malaise every once in a while.

I was told once that a writer’s life is often solitary – tho I never really comprehended just how solitary it could be.

Tho I tended to blame the moon. We are in Cancer and my birthday is soon, so, perhaps this is also playing havoc with my emotional state and my feelings of devastating loss.

The only way I could express how I was feeling was that it was almost as if my most recent bout of wanderlust had shaken too many things loose and that I’m having a hard time putting them back in order again. I require a certain degree of order in my life to function well. I don’t handle absolute ambiguity well at all, even tho I can process the acutely uncertain, it’s the larger term or big picture structure which I find necessary.

Do you love me? Do you want me in your life?

Things like that.

I’ve always been able to adapt to either answer to those questions too. Strange that I can accept either answer with the same sense of finality.

In a way I do feel as tho I’ve lost something – specifically related to certain relationships in my life. It almost feels as tho I attempted to wander down a path which wasn’t meant for me and the universe has grabbed me by the nape of the neck and has snapped me back like a rubber band into alignment and I’m simply shifting from one disjointed point to another until the bouncing back and forth settles into the calm center.

I do know who I am, and I do know my place, and I’m okay with that.

Perhaps some of this is also transitory; I could wake up tomorrow and feel perfectly fine and centered again. That often happens when I find myself suffering these spells of doubt and unsettled ennui.

Tonight is yoga night – more than anything else I’m just happy that I’ll get to spend some time with Lisa. We talk everyday, and we see each other every week, but we’ve been talking about how to improve upon this; with both of us needing and wanting more. Things at home have been quite calm and wonderful too – Jeff has been a peach and my son is enjoying his summer vacation, and there’s really nothing to complain about; which always frustrates me because I still find myself with these unsettled emotions and I find myself searching for a connection which isn’t there.

Maybe I just don’t want to admit it to myself. Maybe I’m just not ready.

So much of my expression is thru my words. I find so much comfort in crafting careful sentences and choosing every word with care and precision, always aware of what each word means and knowing the weight of every possible interpretation – but I can’t seem to reach that place inside me right now. There’s something in my way and I don’t know what it is – constantly nagging at me – as if I’m stuck in a dream I cannot wake from, watching all of this unfold before me as if this landscape of my life is someone else’s and not my own.

I feel lost and helpless and wordless.

Enjoy your Thursday. I’m going to go bend myself in funny poses.