Okay, not really. But i have not really been able to write ever since losing the Q-man and my cousin this past summer. (Apologies to those who are offended for lumping them together, but in my heart, they are both gaping holes. Do not judge my pain.)
I am not usually one to avoid difficult subjects, or as my sister and I call it, “ostrich” (the action of sticking one’s head in the sand), but I keep finding reasons not to write about the things that have been on my mind this year. I will be glad to see this year go – it has been painful in so many ways, and it seems that every time I turn around, i see someone near me affected negatively by some circumstance or accident, or unforeseen crappy event. I think maybe part of that is that the events of this year for my family were so negative that I have on my dark lenses when I look at anything going on around me. I hate that.
I am usually one to try and not get bogged down in negativity. I come from a family of . . shall we say, ‘realists.” We are not a positive people. We save for a rainy day. We look at things with a critical eye. But i am aware of it, and I try, day in and day out, to be thankful for the things that i have and that are going well. But it is and always will be a struggle for me to do that. I have to work at it.
If you think i am irreverent or i make too many jokes when things go awry, you are seeing me fight my basest instinct to get bogged down in the shit.
Maybe that is why i haven’t written about losing my best friend this year. Yes, he’s a dog, and yes, I loved him so very much, and when I think of him, all i can think of is . . I am not ready to write about it yet. I am hopeful that I will get there. Or about what it means to live with the thought that someone you love was brutally murdered, and most likely knew what was happening the whole time.
I will never write about that.
I will continue to push that one down. It seems to get almost more unreal, yet never goes away. I think of it almost every day, in that quiet time when the kids are in bed and i am doing dishes. Every night.
I don’t write about these things because I don’t want to get lost in them. I want to look on the positive side. I want to be positive. Sometimes? There isn’t a positive side. So i ostrich.
And so I don’t write, because i have almost always sat down at Dogwood Girl in the mornings to write about the things that were foremost in my head. It was my therapy. I wrote them down, just as if I had cut my skull down the hairline, pried it apart, and pulled out the malignancy in my brain. But the issues weren’t so heavy before. These thoughts and images are inoperable.
I will get to the dog. I will write about him. The other? It is terminal. Not in the sense that I will die from it, but in the sense that I will die with it. [wipes tear from cheek.]
p.s. Wow. I started to write about what I’ve been up to since Halloween. And this came out. I guess the writing is good therapy after all. If you are still reading my blog, thank you. I know I haven’t been funny, or sentimental, or nostalgic – all the things that people say they like most about reading my blog. I want to be her, Dogwood Girl, again. She is still here. I promise.