Light My Fire

 I’m not sure where I’m headed with this piece, but I just found a quote written in one of my old journals that has really inspired me.

The quote is from the writing of Anne Morrow Lindbergh:

“The best I can do is to piece together every detail I can remember, no matter how little, and blindly hope that a miracle will happen, that this patched collection of fragments may ignite somehow, and that some glimmering of the indescribable feeling may be relit in me” (from Bring Me a Unicorn).

I must’ve written that down years ago, and I forgot all about it. What a gem. I’m not sure of the context of that wonderful sentence, but to me it’s all about the craft of writing. 

Remembering. Reliving. Describing (even the hard stuff).

I wrote that down in a marble notebook I was journaling my way through as a pool monitor in 2017. I do remember reading Anne’s work that summer. I remember the hopeless boredom and the rainy afternoons, the hot asphalt and the wild turkeys. I read many books from the pool clubhouse little library. I read things that intrigued me and kept me reading more, like the history of heart transplant surgery. I read authors I wasn’t familiar with. I remember reading Girl Interrupted by Susana Kaysen. I had seen the movie already. I read some fiction, which was odd for me. I read a lot out of boredom. I was the HOA “security” girl who made sure non residents didn’t swim in the pool. It was lonely and — I’ll say again, for the third time — boring, and it was my first real Florida job. And I got to read (you could say I got paid to do it). And now looking back at the journals, it looks like I wrote ALOT. 

It was writing out of desperation, a way to pass the hot day, a way to purge my mind like a good sweat…then examine the residue. According to some journal entries, some days I was not feeling good at all. I was five years out of a disordered eating episode. Food “noise” consumed me. I ate out of boredom, which I chastised myself for. And yet I had a good body. I didn’t have any good addictions established at that point. I think I should have probably have taken up smoking. Hindsight is 20 20.

Towards the end of that job I started seeing a guy. I was in my early twenties and I had never had a real boyfriend. I know, that’s weird. Since it was a new experience for me it really went to my head. It gave me anxiety. It gave me the good butterflies, like the kind of excitement an addict has before he smokes crack. It was the beginning of the alcoholism, though very innocently, as I would soon start shooting whiskey with him. Not always, but sometimes. I got onto marijuana. I drove miles across town to see this guy, who by now I was totally obsessed and consumed with desire for. I had, as Karen Casey says, the downfall of codependency. I would get buzzed and write honest yet nonsensical garbage. Eventually I gave up writing for the pursuit of intoxication. 

That relationship lasted four years, and ended tragically, for me. It broke my heart (probably an understatement. I basically lost my mind). Once I got a little clearer head I reasoned that the alcohol and possibly the marijuana was to blame for my down fall and our break up. But I didn’t quit drinking, or smoking weed. I was a broken person whose only spirit remaining was being kindled by a buzz. I really didn’t want to live.

I am grateful now that the alcoholism is over and I don’t take refuge in being high. My devotional says that we have to thank our addiction for bringing us where we are today. We could not achieve total sobriety without the disease (Did you ever think a disease could make you well?). “We will not regret the past or wish to shut the door on it.”

It seems I came back to where I left off. I would say with a pen in my hand, but now I type on a computer. It looks like I upgraded. All that Job lost was given back to him and then some. Gratitude is necessary. 

This writing is a little more honest than I want it to be. 

I’m still trying to light that fire.