It’s hard to write anymore. All my truths have changed. Everything I called my own, left. Everything I thought I knew, I forgot. I can’t write good stories. But, maybe I never did.

Once I had conviction in my own abilities, and somewhere along the line it was smothered. Right down to the last dying ember. That little baby suffered down there waiting for me. You think one would notice a heart shrinking, but you don’t. Not until it stops beating.

Mine did. It stopped, quit, rolled over to play dead; and quite sharply, in it’s last act of defiance, took my entire life with it.

I poked at the pen and paper on my desk like a kid poking at soaked ashen sticks with a twig. I wanted it to live. My everything hurt and my first action was to write away the pain. To put it in words, lock it in my cavernous notebook with the rest. I couldn’t.

I tried unsuccessfully to rekindle my beloved but the void was too far gone. In my desperation, I tried to fill it with you. Thoughts of you. Sounds, memories, substitutions.

We learn to live in moments of great disappointment I guess. I grieved for  652 days, 12 hours, and  42 minutes before it came back. I had had nightmares, panic attacks, addictions, and regrets. I was broken, and you weren’t helping anymore. You were the problem, growing on me like a cancerous sore. I hated you, myself, the world, and everything in it. So I gave up to move on to newer things. I took up cooking, running, rock collecting to stay occupied, even tweeted online. Drank a lil’ bit. Talked to strangers. Thought about stepping in front of a car. I starved, then gorged, let you back in, stressed, made money, paid bills, and lost you. Got into a fist fight or two and broke a bone or two. Took way too many pain killers. Slept around. Slept alone. Sniffled once, or twice, or maybe cried in absolute depression for nights on end.

And then I did the unthinkable…

I picked up a notebook

searched for a pen

and started to write again.