My God, It's Full of Words!

Have you ever seen The Fairly Oddparents? It's one of my favorite cartoons to come out... I wanted to say recently, but then I realized it's at least ten years old now. But anyway, there is one episode when Cosmo and Wanda (the fairies) can't grant wishes for a long time, and the inability to let the magic out causes them to get "magical backup" and explode into a pile of fairy dust.

This is basically what happens to me when I cannot write.

Usually it is lack of either time or inspiration that keeps me from writing. Lately, that is not the problem at all. The problem is that I feel like my head is so crammed full of thoughts that I cannot possibly organize them into words. Like, if you have a pot half full of soup, you can stir it easily, but if the pot is totally crammed full of ingredients you can only sort of feebly nudge it around. Right now my brain is like a pot crammed way too full of vegetables without any broth for them to float around in. And I need to dump it out.

But brains are harder to dump out than pots of soup, because there are only a few ways to dump them. You can do art if you're good at that. I'm not. I do words. But when I get magical backup I cannot make my thoughts into words. I have no idea if most people are like this or if it's an Aspie thing, but my thoughts don't start as words. They start as kind of incoherent goop and I have to translate them into words to get them to other people. Which is why I write more than I talk, because that gives me time to think about what I'm doing. It gives me a backspace key. I learned to write because I need to write, because I just can't fully express myself verbally sometimes.

But lately I'm having the same trouble with writing that I have with speaking. I try other ways to empty my brain. I tried meditating today but I ended up thinking too much and giggling at the way the guy doing the podcast says "your body." (Relax your booo-dy. You might start to feel warm in your boooo-dy.) I tried drinking some Kahlua after going down into the cellar and trying to fix the problem keeping us from having running water and realizing more than one pipe is broken. I try watching TV or listening to soft music or listening to loud music. The worst part is, I felt lonely today but I could barely talk to anyone because I just couldn't make the words. Nothing is helping. I wish my brain was like a trumpet and had a spit valve I could just dump out.

And I don't know how I've written so many words about not being able to make any words. I just have too many damn feelings. Feelings about my family, my friends, my job, the house I live in here, my house in Florida that I want to go visit soon and get some more stuff. Feelings about my body and my identity. Feelings about linguistics and architecture and middle school. They're just all so tangled and I can't sort them out and I can't put them anywhere until I do.

Love and Star Stuff

I'm thinking about love tonight.

I'm thinking about somebody I love, who loved me as a child even though she didn't have to. Somebody who's fighting for her life. Somebody who's the last person alive who helped raise me. Somebody it's been too long since I last saw. And I'm crying and knowing I might never see her again, because that's what you do when you love somebody. Sometimes you love them and you can't tell them and you sit there and love them anyway.

I'm thinking about somebody else I love, who I love as a friend because that's the only kind of love they need from me. Somebody who I can see myself in, and by loving them I can't help but learn to love myself. And they know who they are, but I hold my feelings back to keep from ruining the beautiful thing we do have, because that's what you do when you love somebody. Sometimes you love people the way they need to be loved instead of the way you want to.

I'm thinking about somebody else I love, who I love as a child even though I don't have to. Somebody I could think of as just a paycheck, but instead I give her everything I've got, even though it's gonna hurt because someday I will leave and go on to other work. I give her everything I've got because that's what you do when you love somebody. Sometimes you cram as much love into a little heart as you can in the hopes that when you move on they'll still have enough stored up to last awhile.

I learned that last bit from all the people who loved my heart when it was little and then moved on to go be star stuff again. I learn how to love all the time, mostly from people who never came all the way down to Earth to start with. Those are the easiest people to love, for me. The people who landed and never shook off all the stardust. They let me know it's okay to hang onto some of mine.

I LIKE BLOGS

So I'm in eleven million places on the interwebs, but all of my other blogs are about stuff, and mostly they're like serious activist shit. But actually my favorite kind of blogs to read are ones where people just talk about random things they have been doing or thinking about, and my friend Whimsy is doing Blog Once Weekly in '11, or BOW'11, and I was like what the heck I'll play too. Technically I've ALREADY FAILED, since I am starting late, but whatever. I always fail things like this anyway. The point is, I will be blogging more than I would have if I didn't do it.

This would probably be a good time to point out that the writing on this blog will be more, err, loose than my usual writing. Which means abusing run-on sentences a lot. ALSO CAPSLOCK. I AM SORRY.

So, internets, here is what I am up to these days:

• WORK. Lots of work. Okay, really I only work 20 hours a week most weeks, but if there's a holiday or a school vacation or a snow day (I babysit) then I have to work extra. Like tomorrow is MLK Day so I'm working nearly ten hours. Also I have a crazy ass long commute. I spend almost as much time commuting as I do actually working. I am looking for solutions to this, including ways to make my time on the train more useful, which is difficult since I often get motion sick trying to read or write on the train.
• Church stuff. I recently found a fantastic UU church and began singing in the choir, so I have choir practice twice a week, plus actual church, plus recently I've had new member classes (yes I joined the choir before I joined the church, because CART BEFORE HORSE IS HOW I LIVE MY LIFE).
• Tumblr, which is actually more important than it sounds because it is where I "study" social justice issues. Recently I have been reading up on cultural appropriation and Native American cultures because of a discussion that came around about mohawk haircuts. Really. (Before you ask: No, I will not put a link to my Tumblr here. Privacy, yo.)
  
• Looking for a new home! I'm checking out local co-ops and other cheap, progressive housing arrangements. I recently applied for one I really, really wanna get into. I'd be living with like a dozen other people in an enormous house. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure a TON of people applied so I probably won't get the spot, but I'm hoping.
• BEING SICK. Aside from a few quick forays out to help a depressed friend, interview for the aforementioned co-op and buy jugs of water after a pipe burst in my house, I've spent the entirety of the last five days in bed. I have a chronic health problem that tends to flare up around this time of year, and it makes me really nervous that I'm going to lose my job or something if it gets too bad. I'm trying not to worry about it too much, but it is stressful and it means I have to rest more than I really would like.
  
• Hanging out with people, when I have the time and the "spoons" (see here: The Spoon Theory).

And you people wonder why I am so behind on Doctor Who. Sheesh.