I think that most of the writing I post nowadays is more storytelling and less how I feel and what I think. I used to do that a lot more. I miss that. I wonder what happened to make the pendulum swing this way. Did I have more stories than usual? Maybe. Did I stop thinking and feeling? No, that didn't happen. In fact, I think and feel so much about what happens in my life and during those epic storytelling moments that I can't even talk about it, let alone mold it into some internet share-worthy form.
Is that bad? I think and feel so intensely that I have trouble explaining these things to myself and getting responses back. I have a hard time saying what I think. I never really had trouble doing that before. Ever. I was pretty good at forming opinions and stating them clearly up until this point in my life. Ask my mother. Ask the siblings who got stuck with me. Ask the teachers I had conversations and occasional shouting matches with. Read my lit analysis papers. I've got opinions.
But lately I have trouble saying them. I can see the other side and say, I think you could be right. Maybe this isn't an issue of absolutes like I thought it was. Maybe there is good in this other side too. My feelings are twisted and complicated like they haven't been in years. There are certain things in my life I feel absolutely certain about. My feelings are unshakeable and solid. And those are the things that really matter, so I am probably doing alright. But so many other things leave me floundering. I am left unsure of my opinion, afraid of saying something that will be wrong, afraid of supporting something that isn't completely good.
Probably I just need to practice more, right? Do you all know about the beauty that is Emily Series and the resulting tradition of the Jimmy Book? My sister Erin is my very own cousin Jimmy and buys me blank books, which ends up being less a list of here's all what I did today and more a mural of blurred emotion in word form. It's cheap therapy. The problem is that sometimes it helps me think clearly and other times makes everything two hundred times more complicated inside my brain.
My therapist of old might have something to say about all this. I probably wouldn't want to hear it.
I give up thinking clearly today. Maybe I should post some Jimmy book excerpts and call that an internet-share-worthy form of writing. Chalk it up to double tasking and wait for a more structured time of life when I don't feel hopelessly jumbled.
hmmm. Jimmy book prose, coming soon. I think.
I think that my very favorite writers incorporate an explanation of the character's feelings that have helped me better define for myself feelings I have had in similar situations. So, when or if you figure a way to explain what you're going through, just file that away for that book you'll write someday (which I'll read - TWICE).
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