It's A Process

I've spent a decent amount of time writing today, but it's not something anyone but myself is likely to see. I've been working on a letter that's been a while in coming. I'm at nearly eleven pages as of now and I know I can easily keep going for quite a while.

Something is coming to an end that I haven't been ready to let go of, even though I've been telling myself for a long time that I probably should. It's been difficult, though not as difficult this time around (there have been many, many iterations of this scenario) as it has been in the past. I expected to be writing at least some of the letter through tears (which, since I'm using water-soluble fountain pen ink, could have been messy), but I haven't. I've been dry-eyed the entire time. Not anxiety-free, necessarily, but dry-eyed. It's a start.

It's a letter that doesn't make much sense to anyone but me, really. I needed to sit down and put all of the junk that's in my head down on paper so that maybe I could get rid of it and figure out what comes next, because I have no idea. I'm still not ready to let go completely. I still need things and I still want things, but I know that everything is going to have to be viewed differently by both of us. It makes me sad, but not sad enough, so I guess that's a sign.

I haven't decided yet whether I'll even reread the letter once I'm finished with it, let alone let the theoretical recipient read it. I haven't even decided whether to mention it to him. It's all very confusing and muddled, which is why I finally had to sit down and write it all out in the first place.

I started it on a park bench in the cemetery where I eat my lunch a couple of times a week and wrote the bulk of it at my dining room table. I never use my dining room table, not even for eating, but it's really the only clear, flat work surface I have at the moment, and by writing there I mostly avoided the distractions provided by the internet.

I think I wrote about seven pages straight through before my wrist developed a kink and I had to stop for a while. I resumed with pizza and beer and too much internet distraction via smartphone, but I made it through most of page ten before my pen ran out of ink and I had to come upstairs for a fresh cartridge.

I'll probably write some more, I feel as though I should. The sooner I get all of it out and down on paper, the sooner it'll stop circulating constantly through my head. It's a problem and it's one I am tired of. I don't necessarily want it to go away, I just want it to change into something more manageable, something I can cope with.

This is one of those things I shake my head about still having to think about at this age. It feels like a teenage problem, not a middle-age (or very nearly so) one. And, yet, there it is. I'm trying to learn and grow. I don't know yet whether I'm succeeding.