Savvy 17: Lonely

The one who said I'd have to give her an outline also said I'd get lonely writing. I said I understood, and I assured her that by asking all of my friends to keep me writing I wasn't pretending they'd be there with me, milling around my desk so that the whole process of putting together a book would feel like a party. But I was lying. At least, I didn't understand then what she meant by lonely.

This loneliness that I feel now is cavernous. I cannot write and also talk on the 'phone, and I cannot talk to anyone, ever, without feeling that I am neglecting what needs to be done. I have just finished Harry Potter VII, and there is an image near the end (which is, as it turns out, sufficiently vague that I give nothing away by describing it). Dumbledore and Harry are talking, while in the corner something quietly moans and cries out. Dumbledore assures Harry that the thing cannot be helped, but Harry is clearly distracted by it - he wants to be of service - to make the thing happy.

The way I see it, that thing in the corner is my book. When I try to have a conversation, it moans softly. Well, kind of softly. It is the thing that I have to go pick up and take care of, but it's nothing so sweet and responsive as a baby. It's something other entirely. Even picking it up, trying to nourish it, is exhausting.

It is non-fiction, after all. I have to tell the truth about how little I understood what I was doing until the thing was done, a theme that repeats itself in my life, on both sides of the devil. Not a baby alive wants to hear that.

That said, I'm still in the water. Choked a bit last week, but still I am here. Turns out last week, the mosquitoes decided to fly just above the surface, and they forced me down. Said it wasn't good enough to do the crawl (ah, but yes I will indeed beat this analogy to its pulpy death). So I dove right down into the muck. I suppose I ought to be glad there's muck, but still, those leaves and stuff on the bottom, when you carry them out of the water. Ooooh they reek. Yes they do.

In other news we had our first real party since leaving Maine this weekend. People came. And...

I'm lonely. Lonelier than I've ever been in my life. And now I understand why I have to be. Maybe it will hurry me up.

Here's what I learned today: I was able to go to Sri Lanka once I figured out that my anxiety disorder had failed me. All those years of dread hadn't prepared me for the battery of loss, because nothing can. All I'd done was squander the fringes of the good days. Damn.