Progression

One of the unpleasant things about today was just the sense of generalized internal pain - I said to someone that it was like having an emotional flu. Everything just hurt and it seems that anything one can do to dull it is unhealthy. I almost miss the days when I would come home and have a few glasses of wine, and block it all out. The point now seems to be that it's necessary, if I'm going to come through things the way I want to, to let things hurt until they get better. It sucks. Every trivial frustration is hard manage in that frame of mind.

Some of it goes back to pulling out the notebook (after too long a lapse, I admit) and getting to the real stuff, the stuff that hurts. I'm not looking forward to getting back into it, to shaping the experience into something with form and purpose. I can hardly bear to go through it - who could possibly want to read it? It's the real stuff, though, that makes a story, or a poem. And the stuff I hate to look at, is a lot like the stuff nobody wants to deal with themselves. It always a discovery and a comfort to find that we are all going through the same kinds of stuff. If we could remember that, I bet we'd spend a lot less time and energy trying to hide it.

Every true poem or painting, every measure of true music is paid for with life, with suffering and blood. -- Herman Hesse

With the writing, I've also noticed that I'm progressing from just hurting to feeling angry. It's not any more comfortable, but it does seem to be moving toward resolution.