excursus.

if you knew how much i struggle with this liminal doubtful mini-reality, even now...

boundaries have always been important to me; i categorize and define and trace the outlines of who i am and what i see and then along came a little imaginary black house and smudged everything all up. and the smudge scares me because believing in it might mean that i finally took that half-step i've always been afraid i could so easily take, led astray by my imagination into the proverbial white room. and yet the smudge is wonderful, because it was true magic and it caught me up in it.

and now nothing else is defined either and i'm sorry but i just can't be happy all the time, i am only this messed-up person no matter what color my hair is and the path to wherever and whoever and whatever might allow me to take off my own headphones is just my path, and that's always a longer path, i always take the long way around. and on this path there are no 3 a.m. friends so sometimes i spill out where i shouldn't. i reach out when i should just stand the fuck up and figure it out for myself. so.

sometimes i am writing stories and making pictures, and sometimes i cry. sometimes i am excited and cheerful and sometimes i despair. i try to keep it all to myself and not sprawl messily where i don't belong. i don't want to trouble anyone. i know my place, even if it is smudged 'round the edges.

enfilade.

i'm gearing up for a mini-road trip and concert next month. i'm excited (natch), but i'm trying to keep my expectations in check; the circumstances that made it possible for me to go out on the road and see all those shows two years ago were unique. it was a perfect storm, you know? and now, i have to let this show be what it's going to be, i have to open myself to whatever it will give me. i need the jolt live music has for me, i need the re-charge. i can't clutter it up with ghosts and echoes.

plus, this new music, these killjoy boys, on my best days the new songs and all the shenanigans fill me with every possibility, and it's easy to feel connected to my artist self, my writer self. i wish i could be that person always.

on my worst days i'm like i was today, feeling lost and empty and worthless. a dead end.

maybe that's why i find myself writing here. i was thinking about these last few years, thinking about my grand schemes and all that post-divorce babble about becoming my true self. i found a lot of courage here, back then. these days, if there's any forward progress, it's microcosmic and halting. most the time i feel like a mammoth in tar.

and i wonder, has there been any point to it? to this struggle? maybe the best i can hope for is the occasional bright joy of being at a show, my own little bread and circus, and the rest is futile empty daydreaming. i don't know. i'm so happy to be able to go to this show next month, but there's a nasty whisper inside telling me to give up and grow up. i love the message i'm hearing in the new songs, but i feel like a traitor because i can't quite believe i have a right to it. it isn't meant for me. i can draw and i can write and i can make things, but it's wasted skill, isn't it? i don't have a voice to sing with.

i want to believe that at least here i mattered, for a little while. here, at least, i had a voice. i made a difference. i helped.

that it's okay to be who i really am. that it's okay to be starting out at this late stage. that there really will be a place for me to belong again, even if i can't imagine it right now.

that the best days are the real days, and today's ugly voice is the one that lies.