a return to self

It has been eight months since I last posted anything, and I did so fully under the assumption that as long as I got out the story I was writing and was able to give myself a break from some self imposed deadlines that I would find be ok. I think the absence speaks to just how well that worked out.

At the time I was working at a hospital on a unit where I was very much enjoying the hard work (as much as one can in a hospital) and the people, and was also in a sort of limbo where my next steps were out of my hands. I had already spent months in that middle space and would spend another few months in between wanting to pack all my things so I was ready to move at the drop of a hat and the reality that I would need to continue living where I was and needed my things to make me feel like a person. I forced out a little short story about a character that I constantly go back and forth with about what I want to do with simply because I wanted to write more to find out more about her.

It’s a perfectly valid reason for writing something. I have plenty of half baked ideas written in old journals and in docs sitting on my computer that will never serve any purpose other than for me to find out where the character is coming from and what they want.

This is a habit I have with people too. I cannot tell you the amount of bar receipts and movie tickets I kept far longer than I should have as a remembrance of a singular time in my life. The people I spent that time with, the way that I found some form of community with them, anything about that particular day or night that made me feel like I was closer to finding out who I am, what I’m about, and what I want. I have a desk littered with tchotchkes from people I have not spoken with in years. And yet, these were some of the most carefully packed items in this move and every move I have made in the last five years. What does it say about me as a person that many of the animals that I have been gifted are hedgehogs? I have two of them on my desk, and these people were not wrong. They’re very cute and I love them very much but this is not in the top five of animals I would personally tell someone to get me. They will be staying with me, helping me write until I’m dead.

This character really represents a lot of the demons that I have tried to run from — constant loneliness from constant moving in some form or another, a woman who tried to take her future into her own hands and will suffer those consequences forever, and a sense that while her heart is good, her soul may be too corrupted for much other than the next adventure. Its always interesting what bits of my characters that I find myself connecting to and what fully disconnects me from them. Who am I to be telling this story? But why does this story want to be told by me?

I haven’t found myself reaching for her in months as I waited to be told that I was ready to move. Something about diving into a character who is just as restless as I am seemed to make me nothing but more restless. Some anxiety, some needing to make plans that I didn’t know whether or not they would work out, but restless all the same. Maybe following someone around the west at the behest of a literal demon was also just a little too close to what I felt like most of my life has been up until this point. I felt the restless settle a little bit once we passed into california and have found easier days out here since then, but I look at what I have planned to write for the character and think about how much I have ignored her and those bits of who I am for months now. I feel bad, like I’ve been neglecting a friend I really enjoy talking to and being around. Her playlists sit un-listened to in my spotify account, her inspiration boards left with no new pictures.

There is something almost haunting about revisiting a character that you have left alone after pouring so much time and effort into getting the details of their world right. I did a day long deep dive about writing instruments in the 1800s so that I could journal as her correctly. I tapped into all the things I remembered about tombstone from going there, and dug up more about cowboy culture in general for weeks on end. I have folders of research saved about a life that I will only live vicariously through a character that I came up with because I grew up in southern arizona and find deep solace in endless, unyielding desert and the promise of a sunrise over looming mountains. She lives only in my mind and although she has quite a bit committed to page, I have denied her more life because I am tired of the reflection she is becoming.

I am incredibly unemployed at the moment and have done more dives into other projects that I am working on. Other worlds and characters have been given life in ways I cannot wait to play out on the page. But I played her playlist on a trip back to the desert for a funeral two weeks ago, and I can’t stop thinking about how much of where I was raised is embedded in my bones. How much that character really means to the lifelong love letter I will inevitably write about the desert and its heat. There are so many bits of that heartsick lone ranger that are the barest parts of my soul and for both our sakes I need to find my way back to the fictionalized version of the desert. I hope to be haunted by new versions of her tales until I am old and weathered and telling these stories to nurses like they’re my own — until then I will have to settle for writing them as they come and posting them somewhere for both of our hearts to be heard.