When given a moment alone with ourselves a voice speaks up. Yeah, it's you. Maybe not the nicest you. Call it our subconscious voice, our hyper-critical mind, the hamster running on the wheel, a monkey mind, the ego, the problem solver-engineer or whatever title you may give yours, it is an all too familiar voice. And much like our closest family members lilt and intonations, this is vocalization we immediately recognize and listen to our entire lives without ever seeing the source. It is a mutable voice. We are even able to ignore at times-as if we could really be thinking about nothing (not in a Wittgenstein sense). That would be a nice staycation. I am not certain about the source of this voice, its sorted past, its questionable intentions, but mine nags me about the same thing all day every day. For as long as I can remember hearing my own thoughts, I have never thought of it as (a) God or a higher power. I have no proof that this voice is trying to help me or the Universe.
At times I feel like one of those dolls with a pull string in her back. The recording seems to offer only the following encouragements, “You should be writing”, “Reading, Read,”, “You are wasting valuable time”, “You could be writing”, “You could be reading”, “Write, Write,”, “Stop wasting Time”, “No wonder you are behind” and it’s not just that the voice is relentless but cruelly condescending. I probably need that, but it just never lets up, it never offers encouragement. If I write all day until my eyes are fogged glass, my fingers cramp, my pinkie stained with ink, that voice still chimes in to criticize me if I stop to eat or heaven forbid, lay my head on the pillow without a book or piece writing to edit.
John Irving said, “Your friends and family may honestly want you to do what you want to do, but they also want you to do things for them. Worse, they want you to do things with them-go to lunch, go for a drink, go to the movies. They may want to know how long it’s going to be. They will probably not accept the answer a writer has to give: It may be quite a while, it may be forever.”
I am poor in cash but rich in life experience. I raised two kids that turned into kind adults that love and respect me more and more every passing year-really. I am in a mutually loving long term relationship that is not bound by marriage but respect and fueled by making each other better navigators through life while sharing an incredible journey. I have cut the chords and anchors that bound me to my own childhood history and am now able to write right now. Money is tainted. It should leave a red residue. I do take (verbal) donations. I then give them away. I try not to get attached to any-thing. I am able to manage and budget but do not covet those with more money and less time to spend. Having loved ones support you in a creative endeavor is a suspension bridge, you can trust it in a storm. Honestly though, these same supportive loved ones simply cannot love me when I am the writing me. I am far away, I am untouchable sitting in the dining room, on the couch, I am out of office, I am late, I am jumpy, raw, I am smiling for no reason, I am irritable, and-in mid-sentence-
Unfinished and interrupted, all of my aspirations and notions are always simmering at the back of the stove while I am providing nourishment for others.
These words that taunt me, all the words, I wish to trap and splatter across white paper-they will wait, will be there, will come out, will participate with others and make some sense of all this disparate non-sense...One day, if I am afforded enough time, I will have something of myself that lasts forever. Someday my words will last an eternity. These shared words will be an investment, each and every word chosen with thought will never wasted. When I say how proud I am, when I tell them they must listen to their little voice. They call me a mentor, they say my failures inspire them and hearing them say I love you is the brilliant ending of the book I cannot seem to finish. Not a single penny nor second-thought is wasted. I remain unfinished and completely full, filled, forever.
Painting by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, 'Portrait of a Woman' c. 1787 in [Public domain].
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