Thank you to icanhascheezburger.com for this picture.In hiding, you ask? I guess you could call it that. I feel like I've been in hiding from myself.
The sure sign that I'm in Escape (from myself) Mode is that I've returned to the one pleasure that has consoled me since my teens... fiction writing.
It started with the nighttime daydreaming my best friend and I started as preteens. To push out any stressful or nagging thoughts out of my head so I could get to sleep, I begin thinking about the characters, the story lines, and soon enough I'm drifting off to sleep.
But two weeks ago I took the next step. I dragged my manuscripts out of the attic and began scouring it, getting caught up in it again and wanting to do this twenty-something year old project some justice and finally finish the thing.
Because I started this story when I was in my teens, reading it now I can really see how my writing skills have improved over time. Part 2 is so much better than Part 1 (if I can ever finish the whole bloody thing, it will be three parts), in just about every aspect: the well-roundedness of characters, the development of plot lines, even the attention to detail is severely lacking in Part 1.
So, for the past two weeks, I've slowly started rewriting Part 1. It's definitely harder to get to now that I'm a wife, mother and employee; I don't have the luxury of staying up all night when inspiration hits, and battling the constant interruptions and pressing chores is quite the challenge.
I'm looking at this return to writing in two ways. On the one hand, it's a positive thing because I'm doing something I've always loved, using a talent I worked hard to develop, and it's pretty hard to eat an entire basket of leftover Easter candy when your hands are tapping away at a computer keyboard. The part that worries me a little is that in the past, I have enveloped myself into writing when I'm trying to escape something unpleasant in my life, usually something I have no control over. I guess I'm afraid I'm using it to run away from my life and lose myself in this fantasy world I've harbored in my mind since the mid-80s.
And yes, there have been some things in my life that have cropped up in the past month that have definitely been unpleasant. Nothing deadly, nothing permanently scarring (I hope!), but difficulties I wasn't expecting and that have been hanging around like a batch of no-see-ums flying around my face. A major bummer for sure.
Already on a couple of occasions my husband has complained I've been distant. Of course, in my defense, I'm in the middle of typing something when he tries to talk to me, so of course my mind is elsewhere. When I am making the time to talk to him (our early morning chats, our afternoon how-was-your days, our bedtime wrap-ups) I am entirely in the moment and paying attention. Ironically, when I'm trying to talk to him there's usually a TV on nearby and invariably he gets sucked up in some show and doesn't hear anything I say, and I almost always have to repeat every single word.
Come to think of it, he's been guilty of this interrupting thing when I try to read a book or talk to someone else on the phone. He reminds me very much of some pets we had when I was a kid. Every time my mom would try to read the newspaper, the cat would have to jump up on the newspaper, sometimes even lying down on it to make sure she could be the main focus. And our little chihuahua would get so jealous when Mom was on the phone that he would crawl around on her and do this fake sneezing thing to get her attention.
Am I comparing my husband to a lap dog? He is definitely loyal and affectionate and would protect me to the death. But sometimes that ... neediness can be a little suffocating. I've tried many times to explain to him that I grew up in a very independent family, that I learned to enjoy having a lot of space and alone time, and at this point I actually require regular portions of it to keep my sanity in our fast-paced, always-on-the-run lives. But the fact of the matter is, while that kind of life drains me, he thrives on it, and to boot, he's used to a very tight-knit family that was always doing things together and hated doing anything alone.
So there's the update on my life. Still hanging in there, trying my best to traverse these choppy waves and not capsize. The good news is I'm slowly working my way back to exercising regularly, and this week I've been walking on the treadmill every day. As for the eating, well... that's another post.
