In a prison of love and words

I’ve often heard people speak of the great catharsis inscribed in writing. Been encouraged to put my thoughts into words. My emotions into words. My very sense of self into fragile, thesaurus-bound words that mean something else. My therapist wants me to write. A new dance instructor asked me to bring a notebook. I thought, exhausted, how much more can be expected of me to say?

I thought, I’ve run out. I thought all my words, all my catharsis has gone into my stories. I can be expected to give simply no more. Yet here I am, giving more.

There are times when writing becomes a strenuous, exhausting process. Each letter like a painful tooth extraction that, although laden with pain release, also brings about a terrible hole.

I long ago gave up trying to burrow, to hide my words inside hollow trees. Instead, I sought to take as many words as I give, as if able, perhaps, to replenish my ever-dwindling stock. I fall in love with words, even as I loathe the euphemism.

I’ve always said a love of words, of writing, of formulated, calculated thought, is the cruellest art of all, as it allows little room for mystery. It singles you out and isolates, until your precious, clever, bow-ridden words mesh to form a castle. Glass. Prison, but only from the inside. For those standing without, the palace of words is the most exuberant, most breathtaking sight of all, far superior to that of movement or pictures, because words we all share, like meat across the campfire.

I remember being here before. I remember being fifteen. I packed a small satchel then, unbidden, without relating it to anyone, and I moved to my first, though at the time, the castle of words was someone else’s. No one owns their palace, not here. We all squirrel away paragraphs and snippets of other people’s work, and install it in faraway corridors, and oft-overlooked rooms, where guests won’t venture, for the heating don’t work. All palaces of words belong to their owner only about 76%. The rest is stolen.

I was fifteen when I first stole, but only because I knew I had to have it. Words belonging to that portly misleader of youth with belly laugh and cunning eye. I lived with them for months, but one day grew irreparably cold and, recognizing my palace was still a long way from completion, moved back into the world, in search of new dictionaries.

Remember being sixteen, existing in a small fishing town with its misspell, backwards name. It was around this time of year when I fell in love with Dylan, actually I was a devoted, if obsessive student, and I spent most every night engrossed in his words, his voices, his images that, when you took a hammer to them, only came down to syllables. And I went to the Christmas fair in town, and a handsome older man passed by me, and took my hand. Gave me this insistent, perplexing stare, that meant precisely nothing to me. I could see him, for there are windows in the palace, but they are so high and so clouded with page-gather dust that you can’t ever see too well.

Under his gaze, I felt suddenly too little. Not enough. Lacking an answer that was perhaps expected of me. I drew my hand away.

Now I am twenty-four, and I am wanton between my many word-masters. Patti. Ever Patti. Makes me want to move away from my known, still perplexing world, nestle a space that’s human-shaped, and move into her words for a while. Perhaps if I can make myself small enough.

Yet I must vacate by tomorrow, because then, someone else will give me another book. My promised book, the second in a threesome, and I owe already some allegiance to that. Can’t be away from my castle for long. So instead, I’ll dig a small, book-shaped hole inside my own prison of words, and I’ll hide Patti in me, to return to at will, unbeknownst to other captors.

For that great, shatter-brain Dane, I’ve dedicated an entire room, because I feel I have to. I loathed him when we first met, but now I close my eyes, and wish myself inexplicably back to Elsinore. Where everything, the very fabric of sanity, has broken, and all that’s left is

for us to dance with ghosts.

Thank you for reading! I’m fairly scatterbrained, and this was one of the many random subjects that pique my interest.

I recently put out my first book (the first in a fantasy trilogy), and am working on the next two. So there’s a chance I’ll be talking about that, sometimes, as well as many other random topics.

So if you’re someone who enjoys that kinda writing, well, why not subscribe? It’s free. And I’m desperate. So there, honesty.