You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
I HATE MY WORDS!
Yeah, I said it.
F you words! And the horse you rode in on.
You’ve really been pissing me off lately.
I’ve seen you hanging around the computer screen and I’ve heard your delicate sweet whispers to sit down and type a little something.
Screw You!
You are a siren’s lie, serenading me with promises of greatness, while giving me nothing but frustration.
For years I have birthed sentences of possibilities, and you stare back at me with resentment lathered in permafrost.
Have I done something to piss you off?
I give and give and give, and what do I get back?
I wait at the inbox for something wonderful and I get nothing.
Enough. I am done with you.
Words, you are a cold bitch. You take and give nothing in return.
And because I am sick of giving to you and getting nothing in return, I have forsaken you.
I use to tell you about my drive to work, the guy who flipped me off, and the anger I felt.
I use to walk on the beach and I would describe it to you.
When the black lab farted by the window staring off into space, I’d write a thousand words, caressing your very essence.
But now I hate you.
I have had marvelous life experiences, and I have shared none of them with you.
Did you know that? Do you even care?
In one weekend I had a cavalcade of life rain down on me. I had so many words dripping from my brain, I could have showered you in sentences till the end of time.
But did I type one single syllable for you?
No.
I don’t trust you words anymore. I am angry at you. You are a shitty drug that provides me hope, only to let me down harder each sentence I write.
I could have told you about the pride beaming from my heart to see my daughter commission into the Navy. But I kept that to myself. I could have told you how my son graduated from high school in a drive by shooting of crazy, but again words, I did not feel you were worthy. When my son got down on one knee and proposed to his future wife beneath Cinderella’s castle with fireworks exploding and she said yes; well words, I just didn’t think you cared.
All this happened in 48 hours. It could have been a word orgy that would have made Caligula blush, but I gave you nothing. The thoughts I once freely gave you, I kept for myself.
Did you miss me? Did you miss us?
Did you wonder why I stopped tapping the keyboard with the pitter patter of potential magnificence and unprovoked run on sentences of stupid?
I don’t think you did. You see words, had you treated me with a little more respect, we wouldn’t be at this place in our forever relationship.
I have given you a million words and you have stared back at me through the cold white void and told me to go F myself.
So I have turned my back on my words, and told them to go to hell.
Take your damn dangling participles and incessant and unnecessary descriptive prose and kiss my ass.
Like a fight among siblings, I have turned my back on my words.
I am mad at the words.
Words are my drug. Sentences are my addiction. Paragraphs are the weight around my neck dragging me into the darkness.
When I set my words free, I am liberated by the thoughts. I am invigorated by each pulse of my fingers tapping on the keyboard.
The word drug is an electric burst of verbage channeled on a zephyr fueled by Merriam Webster. It is a high that brings a warm euphoria. It is a cold hard crash into a pillow of glass.
I type the words because the thoughts fill the space between my ears. If they don’t leave me, I will become the Hindenburg in a fiery explosion of too much.
I am Niagra Falls going over the edge in my own frenetic barrel.
Words are friend. Words are my enemy. The white page disappears, filled by consonants and vowels that have a rhythm, and hopefully meaning.
This is my sanctum, my salvation, my place on Earth where only I possess the key.
So why has it been so long?
I’ve stared at the door and said, not today, boss.
I’ve peered through the key hole, a universe of forever and simply walked away.
It’s my own self imposed 12 step program.
I use to say I had to come to this space, to fill the page, to document thoughts and moments and lyrical bursts of laughter that float through my mind like so much magic helium.
But lately? Well, lately, I just haven’t felt like pulling up a bar stool to my favorite literary watering hole and cathartically letting go.
Why?
I’ve thought long and hard about why.
Why do I hate my words? Why do I hate the white space? Why do I watch re-runs of Modern Family instead of sitting down in my linguistic laboratory and pump out fragmented sentences that meander to the end of the page?
I think therefore I am.
I write because it satisfies me somewhere that is unexplainable.
It is a quiet place, where my thoughts come to pray.
It is a ferocious place where my ideas explode in super nova brilliance.
It is a frenetic place where the words scatter like so many jelly beans spilled into the vacuum of emptiness.
Why am I mad at the words?
Because lately, I’ve been writing with expectations instead of freedom.
I have jumped out of a plane and I am trying to land in a stadium full of cheering people. I am so concerned with wind currents, and direction and velocity that I am missing the point. The words should be a free falling wild rush of gravity and speed and adrenaline. I should just land where I land and who cares.
I’ve written 2 books this year that nobody wants to read.
I’ve churned out a hundred magazine quality stories that fester in a broth of invisibility.
Suddenly the words are about sales and money and marketability.
But they can’t be. They shouldn’t be. And perhaps that is the problem.
The thing I love turns its back on me and hates me as hard as hate can hate.
I am addicted and my words are my high and lately my word fix is corrupted by ingredients that are less than pure.
I seek commercial success. Perhaps all writers do. But it is a golden ring that is unattainable for some. I use to write because it was joy. Lately, I think I was writing with the hope I would be discovered. But instead of crossing some self imagined divide, I have become a literary pig rolling in a fecal stew. I am saddened by my tumultuous descent into literary need for success.
I’ve mailed out a thousand query letters to agents who are trained to find talent, yet write me that I am not talented in the most uniform of wallpapered drek.
Dear Writer; we are sorry to inform you blah blah blah.
It all disappears into a single, solitary slap in the face from faceless, nameless douche bags who have nice credentials and glossy pictures taken in front of book shelves.
Who are you to tell me that my words are not worthy?
I could be mad at them. I am mad at them. I am mad at myself.
And I hate my words. Maybe because they should be better. Maybe my words are only good words to me. Maybe I see my words as rainbows while others see them as long crossword puzzles of ubiquitous excess.
This life’s crazy portal is an endless well that flashes every thought I have ever had. Stories of Mexico to Vegas to the knock on the rapist’s door.
Just about every word I have ever lived resides here in vivid detail.
I hate you words. And you hate me.
But like a fight among brothers, the hate can only last as long as it can last.
And when the storm clouds part, and the words smile from that beam of sunshine on the horizon, I will reach out to you.
Will you reach back?
If words are my drug, then I must accept them for what they are.
They owe me nothing. They will give me purpose if I choose to write those words.
Perhaps I need to listen to the echoes of time, that shout a single thought.
WRITERS WRITE!
Maybe it’s that simple.
Write without expectation or preconceived need.
Write because you enjoy the free fall into the vacuum of amazing.
Write because it sets you free and fills your sail and pushes your mind into the open sea of white.
I still hate you words. But I also kind of love you.
I’m glad we had this talk.
Life’s Crazy™