Down the Rabbit Hole

Racing White Rabbits

The prompt in one of my blogging groups this morning was about Alice in Wonderland. Normally I would have jumped on that, after all, Alice is my favorite literary character and a reliable source of inspiration. The last few days however, my brain feels like its filled with dirty clouds. My thoughts are a jumbled mess of particles and I feel myself oscillating between a deep belly anger and a crushing depression. Pressure...its that underlying pressure to be both not something, and be more of something else. I want to be selfish. I want to say "fuck you" out loud to the critics and the people who are always so quick to villianize me. I don't though. I just absorb, absorb and absorb it. I throw open the doors a little wider, expose a more productive vein and say, "go ahead, take even more away." Then I go off alone and tell myself I'm not crazy. I tell myself I'm just keeping the peace and that it doesn't really matter as long as it makes everything better. Rambling, now I'm rambling, and what I should do is just delete this mess and write something witty about Alice and call this assignment "done". Check and Mark. But, the assignment didn't come out of me today...this did. Whatever THIS is. I made a commitment to myself and to this craft, to always be authentic and not self-censor - no matter what it exposes me too. Even if something I write plunges me all of a sudden into an unwelcome drama that leaves me feeling isolated and misaligned. Even if the things I write make me think for a minute about not writing anymore at all. I think about that a lot lately. I think about closing the blogs, withdrawing the submissions, closing the trackers...just hanging it up. Who does it even matter to? That question blinks back at me from my screen, stark in electric ink. Even as I type the question, I hear the answer in my head...in my heart. Me. It matters to me. It matters to my muse, my Alice, my racing white rabbit and all those deep, dark holes that beckon.

....so, what I will do is turn up Jack White and bury myself in the endless stream of work stress that is chronically parked outside my office door. What I will do is let this blog become part of the literary landscape...a steeper dip in the rolling coaster. What I will do is shove it all back down, because there is always something else I could be doing better for someone else. I can't afford to be distracted by my own feelings for too long.