I've Got a Tight Grip on Reality

First off, hooray to having followers!! If I were at all creative and good with my hands (in a useful way, that wouldn't get me into trouble), I'd make and send each and every one of you something, but for now, I will make googly eyes at Cheyanne and maybe she'll feel sorry for me and send me some of her leftover stuff. Regardless, I am fortunate and excited to have people reading my little sexy blog, and I'll remember my firsts (don't we all?) and be extra helpful (read: do stuff for free for longer!).

Now on to business: is it normal to become homicidally (I invented a new word- things like that happen in the EdiSex Lair all the time) angry when I hear something about Louisiana on TV? Chey will back me up on it, but before ya'll rise up with your pitchforks and your tidy little buns and fire torches (tidy little buns are important when you have long hair and are working with tools of death), hear me out. I don't mean anything negative about their recent misfortunes with the oil spill and how it'll effect its already battered economy, I simply mean that my fucker of an Ex-Effect is from there and living there again (not that I'd know...I mean it's not like we were TOGETHER when he MOVED BACK and didn't think a 300-mile move was a big enough deal to tell me), so I can't help but think about him.

Thankfully for all involved, I started this blog after a good chunk of my healing and dealing had occurred from that breakup because I was a gross, sniveling mess. Seriously, during work training, I had to get up and go power-cry in the bathroom for 2 minutes to get through the rest of the day. I ate lunch by myself for a week because I KNEW I'd end up crying at some point and I didn't want my new co-workers to see that and think I was insane or something. I mean, I am, but they didn't have to know it then.

If I had the patience to sit down and write either a full-fledged novel (I'm not sure what it is, but I have NEVER been able to write anything longer than like 80 pages) or a memoir of some sort, I'd have a ridiculous amount to filter through. Writing this blog is like therapy for me, and since I'm poor and can't afford real therapy, this'll do. I'm sure everyone finds a bit of catharsis through their writing; sometimes it doesn't even have to take the form of a character or plot line that mimics or mirrors one of our own. Sometimes just writing about a feeling we once had, one we couldn't quite talk out loud to a friend or family member, opens up a higher plane of thought, of being, that gives you greater awareness.

I know I'm a kick-ass letter/card writer, and while going through an extremely difficult two months at the beginning of the year, I wrote letters to someone. Sometimes, it was a boring list of all the stuff I did that do. Sometimes it was just emotional vomit, all the feelings I had inside that I didn't tell anyone else for fear of them judging me or simply getting tired of me. It became a way for me to sort my thoughts and feelings and actually figure out what the hell was going on. I can repeat things (out loud) for hours on end and it not take hold, but once it's down on paper, well, I'm golden. I've always been that way, too. When I was in school and had to study, I usually re-wrote or typed my notes because the act and art of forming words and sentences made the material come alive.

This whole post was supposed to be about why sometimes we become so engrossed in a novel that we feel like we KNOW the characters. After asking around a bit, I learned that isn't the case for all, even when it's a book that speaks to them. Are some of us just more apt to become friends with characters? I know that for me, a book won't have any sort of lasting impact on me if I can't feel myself going along for the ride with the characters. I don't have to be a main player, but if I can feel their feelings, think their thoughts (sometimes even preempt the author...which isn't a bad thing all the time. Oftentimes, it's the sign of a truly developed and flushed out character), then it becomes art.

Some writers can write their whole lives and never create a work of art, even if they have dozens of published works. Some writers can write a chapter and have a fledgling piece of art on their hands. Art moves people. It moves them to action, to thought, to feeling. The best art moves people to all three.

To wrap this all up, I remember that during my lowest point in these past few months, someone asked me why I was reading SO much, if I was trying to escape to a dream world and run away from my problems. I felt a bit sad. My friend didn't really understand that reading and writing WAS me confronting my problems. The literary world is a world that is even more real than reality because if someone else can write those very same emotions and thoughts you're grappling with, well, then you don't feel so alone. You don't feel so alienated, so "special". You have your very own little support system.

And it's all inside of you.



**Post title from Paramore's "The Only Exception". I pretty much put I-Tunes on Random, pick the first song, and usually manage to find a lyric that works with the post. I'm just THAT magical