Another month or so goes by, and I start to get the nagging feeling that I ought to update my blog. Since the last time I posted, DS has started at nursery three mornings a week, just for three hours a time. It's been lovely, and he hasn't once had a tantrum or caused a scene or really minded being dropped off in any way. I wasn't especially worried, seeing as he is securely attached and all, but you always wonder if it's going to be struggle to begin a phase of parenthood that you've never encountered before.
The only problem is, that I find myself little to write about on the subject. I suppose I will count myself fortunate for that, and move along.
All I've been able to think of lately is how much I used to love writing and how little of it I actually do now. I was rather prolific in my teen years, and I used to attribute that to the old adage of pain being a great muse. Now, I think better of that conclusion. Now, I tend to think that it was because, while I was almost certainly in the throws of the deepest and most unbridled depression of my life, I was more to the point absolutely unafraid. When one has little to nothing to lose, one simply emotes in the general direction of anyone willing to listen; even/especially if that someone is a blank diary and/or LiveJournal account. You don't trouble yourself over what the impression of the reader might be, how many grammatical mistakes you might make, how completely bonkers you come across. None of that matters, all that matters are the words, and that while they remain inside of you, unexpressed, they twitch and twist and burn and blister through every pore, every particle. Once they're out, they're more like companions to weather the storm with than oppressors bringing on the sting of an endless rain.
I don't know when I got this fear. Sometime around the part where I fell in love and moved house ten million times and became a mother and an expat, I also became someone who no longer understood her own voice. I could not translate the verses inside any more, and this was simply due to the fact that I had taught myself to fear the many possibilities of what they might tell me, or rather, what they might tell others about me. As if somehow, without realising it, I could somehow be the complete and utter undoing of my carefully constructed happiness; the patchwork of a million mistakes salvaged and sewn into such a remarkable robe, I could hardly believe my own eyes each time I slipped it on.
I don't want to have this fear anymore. I no longer buy into the myth which my formative years have served to spin around my ribs. I have shed this for good and for proper this time.
With that resolved, I hope to be writing more and maybe sharing some as well. Because, to be honest, I know my value as a person, and nothing inside of me could tarnish that, not anymore.
