A Daily Page, the end of September

I am writing this simply to write. I have no theme or topic. This is merely an adaptation of Julia Cameron's Morning Pages, except that I can never stick to a routine and therefore I cannot always write in the morning. To give myself some leeway I decided to call is Daily Pages. Which of course I still fail to fulfill. I have even given myself the allowance of writing by hand or by keyboard, by phone or tablet or laptop. Did I ever get the habit to stick? No. Heck, I can't even always brush my teeth or take a shower when the downswing hits and depression drops on me like an anvil. I am on medication but there's only so much chemistry can do for a brain, body, and spirit that have been pushed over too many edges, and forced to discover new lows (or highs) of extreme severe ultimate exhaustion.

Anne Lamott recommends two hours of writing. A strict routine of sitting in front of the blank page. Write or not but stay there, and you will find out if you are a writer or not. It's not about perfection. It's about the doing. I was able to do it once. But two-hour chunks of time for me are as rare as hen's teeth or very good days. So I make do. I always make do. I have been making do since I was a child and parentified as soon as I can manage to buy bread from the neighborhood bakery alone at 5am in the morning while even the sun is still asleep. I briefly remember a very short period when I was not on survival mode and then I am back to making ends meet with imaginary spare threads and I know that one day all the mess I've been trying to contain will just blow up and it would be a mercy if it killed me right away.

I tried to force myself to stick to the daily writing habit by creating a "Daily Thirty" series on this blog but I ended up scrapping it because of course not even accountability to an invisible audience could make me. I am just always so very tired that I have even stopped daydreaming. My daydreams are about sleeping and when I sleep I just watch my brain organize the mess of the day into storage. I couldn't even remember to play in my dreams, to fly, to eat endless cakes, to fall in love. In my dreams when I do have them, I find myself fixing things and solving problems and I wake up even more exhausted.

Yesterday I was able to make some art. A handful of beginnings. And now they wait indefinitely to be finished, along with dozens of others mostly forgotten in dusty piles. I am always so very tired.

I realized that I have always had this exhaustion even when I was young. It was a tiredness of the spirit that has now seeped into my body worn out by many years of striving, striving, striving and somehow not really getting anywhere safe long enough before I have to keep moving, working, being responsible, being an adult, being the most of what I can manage to be with my finite strength and infinite hope.

I make my art for myself and for those who know this pain, this eternal ache I have carried around inside. They would know. They would see. Even when the ache is dressed up as joy.

(Stepped out for a quick chat with my sister.)

(Twenty minutes later.)

I thought I had lost the draft. The app restarted and for a while refused to load the page.

Yep, pretty much like my every day life. But in real life I tend to lose more than I save. Now where was I? Making art. A part of me wants to make art but it is almost midnight and there's work tomorrow. And on top of the work I have to run errands for the household. I cannot call it a home. It does not feel like a home to me. Not when the narcissist parent lives in it and the miasma of her presence suffocates us and whatever we try to build or sustain to make the house more livable.

I am in my room, appropriately dimmed for bedtime. I struggle to decide what to do after I finish this post. I will definitely need to go downstairs for water (in case I feel the urge to snack). But I am torn between continuing to watch Netflix (and on that torn among continuing House of Guinness or Travelers or a World War II movie) or reading a book (and then to decide to continue Red Mars or The Shining Girls or The Radium Girls).

I will likely end up doing a bit of both, and then end up sleeping very late, and have a very hard time getting up in the morning. And the cycle continues. And I wish I have more happy things to write about, and more random but interesting trains of thought to share.

I shall stop here now. No it didn't take two hours. No I don't know if I will do this again tomorrow nor at what time. I can feel the medication doing its work, turning off the lights at certain parts of my body and brain. To bed, to bed, it seems to say. The day has been hard, let us allow our selves to be soft.