Oil and Rust

I have a friend who says, “Enlightenment is lonely.  You can’t relate to people the way you normally do.”  She cites inner peace as a kind of impairment where our regular conversations fall into meaningless excess, and I understand.

This is how I feel about writing.

In the past, I’ve written.  I journaled notebooks raw with curses and smite.  I wrote long concentrated stories with questionable protagonists.  I reached in and tried to turn back the maternal clock stuck tight and hard with iron rust.  But until now, I’ve never broken through.

I can tell you on this stage what I can’t tell you eye to eye because I’m afraid you’ll laugh.  Easy.

I’m afraid you won’t get that when I put my ABC’s in the right order and blink my eyes and swallow hard that my hands might be shaking.

Until now, this was how I thought of myself:

“Who cared that you wrote your ass off every waking moment that you weren’t changing diapers or delivering flowers or making double mocha skinny half-cafs. YOU didn’t have SUCCESS.”  —Laura Munson, This Is Not The Story You Think It Is

Before anybody had the chance to doubt me, I doubted myself.  I can put blame in a lot of places, but when it comes to the end I have to ask, who was the one sitting around all day whining?

Me.

And I’m done.  Just like that.

But I can’t tell you about this new freedom because I sound all New Age-y and reborn and that’s not me.  Except that it is, in a way.

We’re all here looking for what it is that works for us, completes us, makes our engines strum.  Sometimes it’s God.  Sometimes it’s drugs.  Sometimes it’s truth.

For me, it’s putting my ABC’s in the right order and I’ll be damned if I’m not right.  Because nobody knows until they feel it.

And I gotta say, I must be doing something right because there are a few of you out there, well, I can’t even tell you how grateful I am.

You shine.

So tell me, what makes your engine strum?