I was texting with a friend recently about my recent blog on loneliness. They said I was able to put words to a feeling they sit with often. They went through a divorce a couple of years ago that included relocating quite some distance away. They also mentioned that I was inspiring them to write. I encouraged them to do exactly that, even if they didn’t publish anything like I have done mine. The conversation got me thinking about something I already knew but didn’t have all the words for. I was reminded that I didn’t start this blog because I thought I had any answers. Most days I’m trying to figure things out pretty much in real time. In fact, I’ve discovered that many of the things I write about aren’t things I already know. They’re things I find out while I am pecking on the keyboard.
Looking back, I figured that out decades ago. For as long as I can remember, I’ve done a
lot of wandering around inside my own head.
I can spend days overthinking things, turning it over and over again,
running down rabbit holes and revisiting conversations that ended a long time
ago. As a buddy of mine would say, “I
think we have kicked that particular horse to liquefaction.” I used to think writing was what happened
after all that processing was done.
Think about, figure it out, and then peck away on a keyboard.
I have known for a while that typing it out helps me, and since
Sandy died, it has become clear that the writing is where the real processing
is happening. Thoughts floating around
in my head tend to stay half formed, kinda like puzzle pieces scattered on the
table. Once they hit the keyboard, they
slow down long enough for me to look at them. The connections start to appear, things I
thought I had a good grip on take on a different meaning. Things I didn’t realize were bugging me
suddenly pop up. Some of the biggest
things I’ve learned about grief, loneliness, friendship, gratitude, marriage,
and myself weren’t conclusions I sat down with.
They were discoveries that showed up somewhere around paragraph 3.
It might not be apparent to Y’all, but many times these
posts start in one place and end up in an entirely different place. What begins as a story about an old
photograph, a song on the radio, an empty chair, or a cup sitting on the
counter often becomes some new discovery about myself. The story gets me started, the writing helps
me figure out where I was actually headed. I see this progressing in my posts, especially
since April, which hardly makes sense to me, and here we are anyway. The object or the story was almost never the
point. It was just the thread I started
yanking on.
I think that is why I keep writing. Not because I have some great wisdom to
share, and certainly not because I have life all figured out. That is definitely not the case. If anything, the older I get the more
comfortable I become admitting that I don’t.
What writing gives me is a chance to slow down long enough to pay
attention to what’s happening in my body and brain. Life in general moves along at a blistering
pace. Thoughts come and go, feelings
show up, make a mess of things and then run off and hide in the corner. Writing forces me to wander my ass over to
that dark corner and sit with those feelings for a while. And that forces the questions I wasn’t
planning on being asked, and that I have even less of an idea how to answer.
One of the surprising parts has been discovering that the
things I am learning along the way aren’t always mine alone. Time after time someone reaches out and says,
“I thought I was the only one who felt that way” or “I didn’t know how to put
that into words until I read what you wrote.”
Or just the many little notes of appreciation for writing these posts and
sharing them with the world on my little
blog. Most times I find it a bit odd
because I am usually trying to make sense of my own thoughts when I start
typing. Somehow, in the process of
listening to myself, other people hear parts of their own story too.
Maybe that’s because the things we carry around aren’t
nearly as unique as we like to think they are.
The whole human condition thing and all.
The details may vary, the names change, and the stories are different. One person may be grieving the loss of a spouse,
another is grieving a marriage that ended and a life journey diverted. Someone else might have lost a parent, or a
close friend. For others it could be a
dream that didn’t work out the way they had hoped. The circumstances are different, and the
feelings underneath most of the time are not.
Whatever it was that I uncovered while pecking away on the keyboard is
usually something they see in themselves.
Maybe that’s what kept rattling around in my head after we finished
texting. Not because they complimented my
writing. What stuck with me was the
realization that they had seen a piece of themselves in something I wrote while
trying to understand myself. That’s kind
of amazing when ya stop and ponder on it for a moment.
Two people living very different lives, carrying different
stories and different scars, somehow finding common ground in places neither of
us would have chosen to visit. It felt like
one of those rare moments when two people realize they’ve been carrying the same
thing, even if they arrived there on different roads. Maybe I wasn’t trying to understand myself
after all. Maybe the thing I keep
finding in these stories isn’t answers.
It’s connection. Because when
somebody says, “Yeah, I know that feeling,” you realize that neither of us are quite
as alone as we might have thought we were.
Here is the Oratory that started it all.
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