Airbrushed

           I have been having a hard time facing these blank pages over the course of this week. The words that have found their way to it felt as if they were haphazardly spray painted by some terrible street artist. The words I so carefully need to express myself haven’t been capable. They seem weak or foolish. They do not feel right. The selection of words is important. Yet the words that have been found do not work on this white computer screen page.  They trickle down like some cereal box Wacky-Wall Crawler toy. Cheap and rubbery, sticky yet unable to stick.

             I blame my inability to trust what I’m writing to be honest and real. The stories seem trite and without any redeeming virtue.  The poems are always about the woman I let get away, the woman I am crushing on, the woman I want in my life or the woman that can’t be with me. It’s pretty much the same all the time. It’s depressing. When I share that depression with the readers I do have, I get no real constructive feedback. People only tell me that I shouldn’t write so much about being lonely or depressed, that expressing the things that are troubling me appears to be desperate. Especially when I write about women I love or want to love. I’m told it makes people uncomfortable to know that about me. They say it somehow weakens me, whereas I always thought it gave me strength to be real and express it.

             That’s stifling, especially to the creative process. I think all great art, words, painting, poetry and music can come from some place of great sorrow or mournfulness. To be told that I shouldn’t express myself honestly is like blinding a painter or gouging the throat from a singer. People want happiness and good feelings glazed and shellacked over the internal troubles of a deeply feeling person. They do not want to think about their own sorrows in the words that I write. So I’m torn by what I want to write and what I think will be enjoyed. This conflict has prevented me from writing anything at all this week. I’ve been stunted.

             I’ve been out a lot this week too. The stunting has caused me spin into a web of foolishness and badly planned overtures of admiration. I try to live for the moment, yet the moments I live for are usually the wrong ones, causing me pain and others some amount of pain. Embarrassment, bashfulness, silliness and general stupidity are the traits I’ve been suffering from of late. I’ve been careless with my heart and the hearts of others. I’ve been ashamed to stand up for the right things and allowed myself to acquiesce to the wrong. Which has again resulted in this page of ongoing whiteness staring at me every morning.

             So I paint over it all. I paint it all white, burying the words, the thoughts, under a thick coat. I know it’s temporary. I’ll get back to the words in time and I’ll feel a smile waltz under my nose when a phrase I love returns to my fingers. It’s all temporary. I know. It’ll get bet better. But let’s lay off the stifling for a while and remember that we all have ways to express ourselves, for better or for worse, hopefully for the better.   

             Sometimes I just have to get this crap out. Thanks.