Sunday night confessions: why I stopped writing for two months

Confession time: I haven’t written more than a few hundred words in a couple of months. I hate that it’s been this long, that I let life create a giant roadblock. I’d been busy working two jobs and I hadn’t wanted to do much more at home other than spend time with friends/family, read, and watch Parks and Rec.

But even with two jobs, things started to calm down enough last month that I was in the mood to write again, felt sufficiently energized to pick up the novel I was writing.

The reason for my new energy?

I fell in love. 

I fell in love with a guy I only knew for two short months, but it was (is) real nevertheless. For most, it’d probably be too soon.

But I’ve never been most.

At 24, I’ve dated my fair share of men. Whatever we had going usually faded out after a couple of dates when one of us realized the other couldn’t suit our needs. Some just wanted sex, others “weren’t ready for anything serious.” And while I don’t exactly date to find a life partner, I also don’t date to date. I figure out pretty quickly what I want and if something’s gonna work. Because just as I have no need for superficial friendships, I have zero interest in half-hearted notions of connection. My heart is both too cold and too full.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise then, that I’ve only had one serious relationship and have fallen in love twice.

The men I love(d), though - neither of them were the one I was in a relationship with.

I was 16 the first time I fell in love. He was tall, blond, beautiful and so incredibly his own person. I’d never met anyone like him, never met anyone who made me feel so much. I was insanely crazy-in-love. Obsessive, probably. I was 16 and prone to obsessive behavior (proven by one glimpse of my book and movie collection).

I managed to sort of tell him in a series of embarrassing circumstances too mortifying for this page. Nevertheless, he didn’t feel the same. We were friends and that was the end of it. I took it hard. Just as I love with a fierce intensity, I depress with just as strong a force.  A trait that’s still deeply engrained in me 7 years later.

I dated my first and only, quote “boyfriend” when I was 20. I loved him for being there for me, for coming into my life when I needed someone the most in the aftermath of the death my best friend. We moved pretty quickly — I even had a promise ring after three short months. It fell apart not long after when I realized I wasn’t in love with him and would probably never be in love with him. We both deserved better.

Fast forward four years and I found myself falling again — knee scrapes, broken bones, concussions and all. It fell apart before it began, really – due to timing, circumstances, and any other reason deemed appropriate. The reasons don’t matter, not in my case, only that the pieces linger, hanging off my person to trail after me wherever I go.

Some days are a struggle to get out of bed, others are light and almost carefree, as if my heart regained the power to decide I didn’t need him, anyway.

I’m not in a headspace where I can bring myself to write about him, even in the barest of senses. I still hold onto some thin thread of hope that it'll work out, but that thread frays more and more everyday; it's nearly nonexistent now.

Someday I can put it all into words, everything that I felt, everything that he was, everything that we weren’t. This isn’t the place for that.

It does bring me back to the beginning of this post, where I was in a great place for writing and then didn’t write a damn thing. But then we crumbled and everything became distorted, too heavy for lifting fingers over a keyboard.

It’s been a month and that still hasn’t changed much, but that doesn’t matter. Writing has no place and every place for feelings. It has all the nooks and crannies in the world for emotional outlet, but leaves no room for stopping because life gets hard. It punishes you with slower keystrokes, elusive words that are just out of reach, and scattered thoughts.

Writing simply does not allow for life to get in the way.