is it weird that i get the blogging itch bad enough to scratch at one year intervals? maybe. it would be better if i planned a yearly post instead. anyway, things look different around here. i feel like a stranger in some place that i was once a regular.
which fits my current mood.
i'm reading the midnight library and i was struck pretty early in the book with the realization that nora's depression feels so familiar but so distant. i'm reading the words and i keep thinking "i was there, i was right there. and i'm not there anymore. and i don't really know when that happened?" i was sitting in that room, not in her chair maybe but it was in the same room, and i know it so intimately that part of me hadn't even realized i had left the room. but i did.
i started this blog over a decade ago - eventually i will need to sift through these posts because i know there are many that should be taken down - and some days i can barely remember the girl i was then, the anxiety and depression, the pressures and expectations that weighed so heavily on me. there was light, too, and friends and laughter. but always with the knowledge that i was three steps away from too late. that girl is still inside me somewhere, and on nights like tonight i'm kind of happy that this roadmap exists to lead me back to her. just in case i ever need/want it.
this book is making me feel things. this year is making me feel things. and nostalgia will always be the place i feel most at home. but there are times, a surprisingly lot of them recently, when i feel like i could get pretty comfortable in the here and now.
after i had my second son, i had bad post partum anxiety and depression. i had gotten a glimpse of it with my first, but that second kid... ouch. after weeks of thinking about it and talking it through with people (some of which were the wrong people, and even though i know they didn't do anything maliciously, i don't think i can ever truly forgive them), i remember sobbing on my bedroom floor after coming to the realization that i was the worst thing that could have happened to my children. i begged my husband to take the kids and leave. to move to the other side of the world and raise the kids alone, or with his parents. i'd go to library story time with friends and mommy and me classes and playdates and then come home and just cry and cry and cry. and yell. so much yelling. and stare blankly at the wall as my kids cried or watched tv or destroyed the house. and i'd go to bed drowning in guilt. and in the midst of all of that, i stopped writing.
i didn't notice it at first, because i have had my share of writing dry spells. but one day it hit me that it had been well over a year since i had written a single word that wasn't messages on my birth board and social media posts. and this was a different kind of not writing. this was not that i wasn't putting the words down, it was that the words didn't exist at all. november 2019 i decided to try nanowrimo again. i had written like a thousand words in 2017 and didn't even bother trying in 2018, but in 2019 i decided to try. and that first day of writing was like filling my lungs with air when i hadn't even realized i had been holding my breath. i remember telling friends (because along with an awesome kid and a decidedly not awesome time, i came out of that pregnancy with amazing friends and the best support group) that it felt like i had found myself again. i hadn't realized how lost i had been, but putting words to paper (or screen), no matter how bad they were, was like coming home.
the midnight library goes beyond sylvia plath's fig tree that has haunted me for most of my life. you can look at your book of regrets and then choose a different life and live it and if you don't like it, you can come back to the library and choose something else. i'm the person whose anxiety spikes every time my kids watch the lion king and mufasa says "you are more than what you have become." (and they watch this movie a lot.) the idea of trying on different decisions is definitely my cup of tea.
and yet, i also feel like i have reached the point where i've got my foundation down. after extensive talks with friends and countless hours of my typical introspection, i have come to the conclusion that entering your 30s is the best thing that could happen to a person. your 30s are where you find your why, your how, your no. you learn your who and figure out where to distribute your fucks. that's not to say anything gets less confusing or easier or anything, but, well, maybe it does. maybe you just get better at being confused. there's altogether too much pressure put on your 20s.
but back to my point.
a recurring thought in the book (so far) is that the only way to learn is to live. hardly groundbreaking, but still. the only way to learn is to live.
maybe there's no real midnight library, but the girl that started this blog feels like she belongs in a different book than the one writing this post today. maybe there are lots of books within me, that start and end with my decisions. sometimes i go back and have to relearn a lesson again and again before it sticks, changing small things before i can really understand what i'm meant to. how many books within me have the same title, the same plot, but a cast that's just that side of different?
i feel like i've learned enough to know that the versions of myself that feel the most comfortable are the ones where words are prioritized. my goal this year was to focus on writing. and i have written/worked on my writing every single day since january 2nd. for the first time in years and years, i wrote a novel. from start to finish. i didn't give up halfway through because november was done or my idea fizzled out. i wrote almost 100k words, and most of them are crap, but i know what needs to be fixed. even if i might not always know how to fix it. i've read 41 books so far this year. and yes, a lot of them are trash, but you know what? i like trash. i like silly romances and dramatic teenagers and hidden worlds. and with every word i read and write, i feel like i'm finding more of myself. i'm piecing myself back together like a puzzle. and maybe by the end of it i'll find myself in the book that i want to stay in, and the midnight library may lose, if not its appeal, at least my desperation coloring that appeal. (no, i never did learn not to mix metaphors.)
and maybe that's why i keep coming back to this blog every time i know i'm done blogging. maybe i need some way to catalog these books, so that when i find myself in the right one, i don't forget every book that was written to get me there.
*Far, Far - Yael Naim
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