may 19, 2010

Forgive the lack of creativity with a title. I’ve been in recovery mode for the past week and a half.

It’s a natural process, time taken at the start of the summer to just…recover. From everything. I guess I never noticed it before, this obligatory period of recuperation – perhaps this is because this time a lot of things seem to have piled up in my mind that I subconsciously stowed away for this very moment to sift through. A lot of things have happened since I last thought to update.

But I’m going to have to leave you in the dark about the exact nature of these things. Essentially, they are in the past and don’t particularly matter anymore. I shouldn’t waste my energy explaining the details and then getting myself worked up again. I’m exhausted enough.

But the good thing about recovering is that I’ve written a lot more. Not only have I been neglectful to the blog, but my poor journal has had to suffer through almost three months of empty pages. That is my fault. I got caught up in other things and lost focus on improving my writing and getting my ideas on paper.

And I come back here wondering what my intent was in the first place, starting a blog. I believe it was to share my college experiences. I realize I did very little of that. I tried, but there is something very stilted, very awkward, about reliving events for others in the form of written word. I feel strange sharing details of my personal life in this medium…I feel exposed. I feel like I should have been writing letters from camp, explaining all the things I’m doing and the people I’m meeting and how much fun I’m having and so on and so forth. It feels somewhat forced and disingenuine.That’s not what it should be to me. And I realize that I would do better if I wrote more about my reactions to people and events and the things I see and read. I think that would be more suited to my style.

And so I start with a random bit of prose from my journal today that sums up how this week and a half has been for me:

She covered herself with night and drifted through the house on soundless feet. She went through all the rooms and in the dark her presence echoed against the floor and the walls and the ceilings as if they were all blank and empty. She danced naked in front of the windows and no one stopped to watch her because they were all asleep and thinking of nothing. She talked to someone who wasn’t there in the sitting room where all sorts of formal conversations took place, saying things she never said aloud before. She pulled the sheets from her bed and stalked the shadows in makeshift garb, a pretty young thing whose veneer of strong calm had cracked and who was afraid to she she could be anything less than composed. She hid away her memories in a box and burned them in the bathtub and washed the ashes down the drain. She collapsed on the stairs and sobbed for an uncountable number of minutes and the house in shades of blue wept with her. And when the sun came up she stood in the kitchen with a smile on her face.

Recovery can be difficult sometimes. But I think part of it may be because I feel so out of place back at home. I’m not surrounded all the time with the people I’ve come to consider my second family, who all know me and can help me in recovering in a way my friends from back home and my family cannot. But having to go it alone makes me stronger, I hope. It makes me realize that I don’t always have to rely on other people to get me through tough times. And in a way, hitting the publish button at the end of this and sending myself out into the internet world is helpful.

And when I go back to Atlanta and bury myself in class and books and what remains of my second family, the recovery process will end.

Hehe, I just turned up the volume on my computer and R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” was playing. How appropriate, no?

Expect more frequent updates, those whose tone will hopefully be of a happier nature. I hate for you all to think I’m some sad, overly pensive writer. Because while at times I am, that’s not the person I generally strive to be.