Hollows

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I’ve had a good year and a not so good year.  I had a great marathon and a bad one.  I wrote a few good poems.  I read a lot of good books.  I met a few good friends and a few bad ones.  I want for nothing.  Happy new year, right?

I hate that word, want.  It makes me think that we all have little holes in our souls and the things we “want”.  I have no holes, a few hollows, but that can be blamed on the geography of the place I originate from.  The hills roll there and people live in the crevices, separated from one another.  Though I’ve lived in the flatlands my whole life, I’ve never felt the glacially open geography of my friends’ emotions and feelings.  I’ve built my own rivers and ravines, my own psychic mountains and valleys.  I live there in heart, in the woods. 

I’ve been reading Franzen’s essays: How to be Alone.  The first one, about his father’s Alzheimer’s is great.  That and the song, “Better” by Regina Spektor.  When she says that if you never say your name out loud to anyone they can never call you by it.  I never tell anyone my name.  I hold it close like a secret.  I am a secret.  Here’s a hint, though I appear wistful, I really don’t take myself too seriously. 

I’ve been working on a short story as you could know.  The main character is alone.  She is alone and yet the center of attention.  She is alone and she is the savior of her town.  She is numb.  This is a big part of her, she has been a separatist.  She has gotten used to numb, and the new closeness of bringing other people back to life is feeling overload.  I used to be numb like she is in the beginning.  I fear going back, I can feel it starting to happen already.  Interestingly, I need no chemical help to go numb.  I had a friend once who found feeling frightening, too.  We were in love.  We were young.  Love wasn’t what frightened her, though.  There were other things going on with her, things I don’t feel I can share, because they are not mine. 

What is mine, though, is how frightened I was being in love with her and watching her get addicted to drugs.  Frightened and guilty, because we started together, and they didn’t have the same hold on me.  Another friend, a friend who I never see anymore, stopped me.  She went on to heroin and I realized that no matter how strongly they love you, a drug addict will always love their drug more than any lover. 

She is clean now.  She has a wife.  She is beautiful and real.  The funny thing about love is, even after you fall out of love, the love still incubates inside you, you always have it if you will admit it.

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Filed under Musings, lust and love, writing