Note: I am aware that this looks God awful in IE. Do yourself a favor and get you some Firefox before you get lost in the big scary world out there.  

Thursday, September 27th, 2007

Writing the wrong

Things are going much better on the leg-and-urine front. I can walk, I can talk, and I can pee yellow. I can't sit cross-legged or kneel to find the clicker that dropped behind the bed, but I can get off the toilet without cracking my skull open, so that's all right in my book. And today I got to say, "Hey look at me! I can put my pants on by myself," which pleased the doctor very much.

I've been thinking a lot about when I changed. There's been so much talk about change lately, for good and bad, and I've been consistently keeping track of my life for six years, so I have the unique position of being able to look back on something other than memory. Which is not to say that it is any less biased than memory, but it's a little different. I've always had a filter on what I've written, because I've always had some purpose, because I think everything you write should have a purpose. But it's like I have a new one each year, a new reason to write, a new something I'm trying to do every time. And once I decide on one, I can't go back to color it in anything other than what my purpose was at that time. I can't return to the big confessions of freshman year and put a different spin on them. So I figure that's as good a place as any to start, to track my spin on things.

2002: Everything is anecdotal, but at this point my life is rocking dangerously between comedy and pain. I want so badly to make people laugh with my stories: behind-the-scenes at a Catholic mass, online conspiracies against AIM robots, mock interviews with classmates on pop-up ads. A sort of "you ever notice how?" brand of comedy. But every now and then, barely-restrained fury at the injustice of everything emerges. I think I wanted very badly for talking about things to make them go away. Appropriately, the last entry of the year is the one on my cutting.

2003: Everything flips. I go from desperately wanting to mask my sadness to hiding my desires under a very thick layer of cynicism. Nothing is inherently good. Nothing is worth doing because it all amounts to nothing. No one will stay forever, no matter how many open letters I write, no matter how many times I beg for attention in my graphic accounts of masochism. "Sometimes it seems there is no redeeming myself, because everyday I just sink further into what is an abyss of disappointment that ultimately controls my life" (10/8/03). I am who I am and no matter how fast I want to move, I am not going anywhere.

2004: I become a little more creative. There are less diary-style musings and more snippets from conversations, more pictures, more one-sentence considerations, more random narrations. I begin to notice things outside myself. I begin to get a clearer view of what people see when they see me. My actual memories reflect what's written. This is also the year that a small list of resolutions becomes what I think is the turning point in my life. I begin to see that what I do makes me. The list, from 10/7/04, is:

1. learn to knit.
   
2. start drinking tea.
   
3. get a coat. no, a real coat.
   
4. wear a scarf with that coat.
   
5. learn to do laundry.
   
6. stop wearing band t-shirts, dammit.
   
7. write that screenplay.

It is important. They are such small changes, and I remember someone saying to me (someone I spoke to frequently and who openly analyzed my life for me but who was actually a periphery character), "Why no more band shirts? What's the point of that?" But there is so much to it. It is a list about changing the way I look, letting my outside reflect my inside, taking responsibility and being productive. I see myself so clearly in my head and I want to see if it's worth becoming. And as a result, this is the year that my writing may reach its peak. There are very few things in here that make me cringe.

2005: I continue the style I've set down for myself, of turning the hugely significant into a few lines, of taking the minute and expanding it into an epic. I deal with my separation from my friends and my fear of going to college by spending a lot of time writing about my childhood, jotting down every memory that comes back to me. I'm pretending that I can put off the future, but by the time I go from junior to senior year, I know better. I'm accepting a lot more. When things happen, I nod. I start to see myself as truly excellent, as something most people strive to be. "I was just overwhelmed by a sense of competence, an I've got this sort of feel" (10/19/05).

2006: I become outrageously arrogant in my writing, but it's not entirely misplaced. I only write for the first three months, and each is just an angry spit: "That's fine. I don't like to see you in your true form anyway. Just, keep in mind, I know you're unreal with me, so whenever you grow tired of having to keep up the image, just give me the sign. I am so, so ready to cut off all ties" (3/11/06). I aim to kill with my words. Part of me thinks that I want everyone to know exactly what I think of them, but the other part--the part that shuts down the website from here--knows I'm terrified. I stop writing. I continue in my personal diary, but I don't pick up a public one again until I've dripped out enough venom to know that it's safe to come back to the Internet with everyone I know many miles away. I waste space with memes and stories; I become a typical LiveJournaler, telling about my day from beginning to end with very little reflection. As I go into college, I briefly panic, and there are several tearful entries, but I don't move very far beyond the anecdote.

2007: I kick off this website and become somewhere around 85% happy with myself, but the two don't mesh. My real life and my written life do not work together. I operate perfectly well in society; I make friends, I do work, I know what I like and what I want, but it does not come out on paper. The way I carry myself in the world--staying positive and optimistic and centered--does not translate into writing. I quell the feelings that so strongly influenced my writing in 2004. When my attitude now is to say, "Oh well! Things could be worse! At least I am this, this, and this!" how can I write? I'm growing tired of all of my entries ending in that manner. I am suddenly back to 2002, trying to cover my darker feelings with dinosaurs, bloody urine, and binge eating, but that's the only way I can operate! And what do I even mean by that, darker feelings? Do I even have them anymore? Sometimes lonely, sometimes uncool, sometimes ugly, but nothing dark. I've tried to, and I can do it in fiction. In fact, I can write some pretty depressing scenes that have driven a lot of people to tears, but when it comes to my own life, that's not there. And without that there, I don't think I write as well.

I'm afraid of falling flat. The last thing I want is to have toned myself down so much that instead of being a nasty, bitter, cynical, self-loathing fuck, I become a nothing. I am still looking for inspiration in what I experience these days. It's a strange transition. I've changed a hell of a lot, but I need to round that last corner. Which is why I'm going to make some resolutions. Three years and twenty days after that extremely important list, I'm going to make another.

1. Finish my novel rewrite and show it to more people.
   
2. Buy some dresses.
   
3. Start a large-scale photography project.
   
4. Knit something big, something challenging.
   
5. Get a boyfriend.
   
6. Live somewhere else for a year.
   
7. Eat new foods that won't embarrass me in restaurants.

And that's that.

 

Copyright 2007-2008 Molly S. Griffin. Powered by Greymatter.