Reconstituted

I was hearing the wolves howling again. Counseling might work eventually, but the bit at the beginning where you dump your heart out and sort the contents is really rough, and a week is not enough time to recover before having to do it all over again. I'm usually a calm person, but I've been on the verge of tears for weeks, and I cried and yelped my way through our last session like a kicked puppy. I was googling things like 'jobs in Canada', 'how to break down cortisol', 'airline tickets to Santa Fe', 'vrbo cabins Washington', feeling like a raw nerve ending and just wanting it to stop for one goddamn minute. It's human nature to feel like whatever you're feeling right now is how you'll feel for the rest of your life, and I knew it would pass, but it's a hard thing to believe when the wolves are at the door.

There are things I can control, though. Reading has always been my escape hatch, and I hadn't been able to get through more than a couple paragraphs in months, so I checked out a stack of Mariko Tamaki graphic novels to trick my brain back into focusing on an entire story. It’s working; right now I’m reading Bullet Train, by Kotaro Isaka.

When I pictured my future as a kid, I saw a quiet space with a small window and a typewriter, where I could write stories, be alone, and feel safe. Well, why haven't I done that yet? Painting is my thing, but there's room in my life for writing, too. I went down to the studio and hauled out all the old broken furniture that people have ditched down there over the years, cleaned everything, covered and stowed the pottery wheel, bought a few rugs, and stapled tapestries to the unfinished ceiling beams to catch the dust. On Saturday I came home from work to find that Mike had dropped off the kids with my mother for a sleepover, and he was ready to take me wherever I wanted for a date. "Best Buy," I said. We came back a few hours later with a new Mac Mini - the first real computer I have ever bought for myself (I draw on an ipad and blog on my phone, neither of which is good for writing novels). He helped rearrange furniture, wire paintings, and hang blinds across the small basement windows while I threw out old art supplies and set up the computer. The studio started looking pretty dang cozy. By the time we sat down in front of Inkmaster to eat tubs of Indian curry, I was feeling more like myself again.  

We stopped at the art museum on the way to Sunday dinner. The security guard who usually barks at me when I get too close to the best paintings (they are covered in glass, relax my dude) was too busy chasing teenage girls with backpacks that he thought were too large, so I put my reading glasses on and got my face right up in the brushstrokes. I thought about a line from This American Life that has stuck with me: Delight is like the butterflies flying around and landing on the thing that is joy. I felt delight, looking at those paintings.

At my mother's house that evening, I stood in front of the dozens of lined notebooks filled with handwritten stories that are crammed onto all her shelves, then picked one at random. The first page is dated May 2011. Yesterday I started transcribing it, typing away for hours and just enjoying being with these characters I've known all my life. Many of the stories aren't finished, taking up hundreds of pages before another story started telling itself and needed a fresh notebook, but they're wonderful first drafts. I'll get them typed up, and when I find the right one we can flesh it out and finish it properly as co-authors, maybe with some spot illustrations. 

Feeling okay again. And FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE, as human logic goes.