Why I Write

I am quite sad today. It has been a week since any contact with D. I’m having those moments of abject amazement that after decades living in each other’s pockets, we have come to this. I don’t know how he feels about it, obviously, but I’m assuming he’s okay with it. Doin’ all right. Makin’ out. Whatever.

How do guys do that, turn their backs so completely on a relationship? It happened to me once before, in college. One minute I had a boyfriend and the next he was telling me that he had succeeding in putting me out of his mind. An act of will, to what end I’m not sure. Maybe that summer vacation was beginning. Maybe that I wouldn’t put out. I still remember sitting in the park, at night, on a bench and listening to him say that he’d just made up his mind not to care for me anymore. My mouth is still hanging open at that one.

I’m not writing this for publication, particularly. Maybe I’ll put it on ByJane, probably I will as I’m not uncomfortable revealing the things I do. But I don’t want, as another blogger put it, a pity party. Mostly I’m up, or at least even-keeled. I think when I have to talk about the situation to others, it puts me in a funk of sorts. Yesterday I had lunch with a friend, and though she wasn’t at all nosy, I ended up spending more time with those words about the situation in my head and mouth than was good for me. And last night at knitting, a friend asked how I was doing. She asked out of concern, to be supportive, but what I thought was, I don’t want to have to think about it enough to articulate something reasonable and truthful to someone who is not inside my head. But I did answer her, and maybe that’s why I had a painful dream of D and the situation he has created, and I woke up feeling sad. And now, quite sad.

But this is why I write. Because somehow, after saying all this, I don’t feel so sad anymore. Why is that? Because I've said what I'm feeling, I've communicated my state to the outside world. It's not just holed up on my heart where unspoken, it can fester. It doesn't matter that it's just me and the laptop (and Molly, the faithful dog) here in my office. I 'm writing to people who I know read my words, even if I don't actually know my readers face-to-face.

The meme on BlogRhet asked: Can you point to a stage where you began to feel that your blog might be part of a conversation? Where you might be part of a community of interacting writers? When did that happen for me? In stages, incrementally, often microscopically. First, there were the people I actually had relationships with before blogging, and then came the people I met through blogging. And then people who I've never seen and maybe never will. But they're in my heart and--

--I just realized--they're in my head. They are the people in my head for whom I am "articulat[ing] something reasonable and truthful." And the act of doing so to my blogging community is vital to me. Non-bloggers often assume that what we do is just an on-line journal, and for some that may be. But for me, it goes beyond the bounds of a journal. My journals over the years are so full of woe and pathos, even I can't bear to read some of them. I just spill it all out there, guts on the page, inarticulate, pure emotion.

In fact, I started this post in my journal and you can see by the change in font where I switched to the Blogger post. It was at the point where I realized that I had written myself out of sadness, and set about to figure out why and how. And I recalled the moment, round about the middle of the second paragraph where I made the choice of voice, my voice, the voice of ByJane, which is totally different from that of my journals. It was a deliberate choice, and it signaled my intent to work at articulating what was reasonable and truthful. To write and revise, rework and rethink so that I'm telling all of you what I am feeling right now. Not shouting to myself on some private pages.

Because I am part of a community of bloggers, I know I'm being heard. And that makes me not alone.

Blogito ergo sum....indeed.