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Photophobic

I have been avoiding the light, hiding from life, wishing for a cool quiet oasis in which to ride out the storm of pain and loss that has been raging outside.

So far, October can go to hell.
Or maybe it has already.
My family has
We-
We have been dealing with real things, impossibly difficult things, scary and crushing and heartbreaking things.
Real things, not these imagined and half remembered things that I write about here and adapt for my fiction, no, genuinely terrible events, life changing big and I have found myself unable to process these things in a meaningful way.

It has been all too real for me, too serious, too much.

I am a fake adult, understand?  I am not equipped to deal with adult things.  I wear the uniform, but I never want to actually play in the game.
And for most of this stuff I am only a peripheral player, a side note, but my head and heart have been filled with worry and terrible grief for the people I love, and I find myself wide open emotionally where the smallest thing can send me spiraling. All work has ceased, I haven't written, haven't edited, haven't submitted, haven't blogged, I have been attempting to keep my hand in various outlets with a couple of tweets here and there, or a Facebook post or two, but I have been struggling to see the importance of these things, and the face I present to the world is a plastic mask, locked in a rigid and unchanging smile, and people can look and say yep, that's the guy I know, good old him, and I want more than anything to hide and avoid and burrow into the sand until the storm has passed.

Photophobia is a symptom, indicative of a larger issue, an indicator of a deeper pain.

I hide when things get too bright, I slink away into the shadows, bury myself under the blankets,close the blackout curtains, lock the doors and turn off the heat.
I am a dissected frog, pinned under chemical lights, taken apart, inspected, flayed open for the learning of others.
I squint and hide from the light, I bury myself
I wish for a different world, one in which parents do not outlive their children,
Where sickness and pain-
Where-

This is nothing, really, just an attempt to explain myself, to say that I'm sorry that I took so long to call, I'm sorry that I am not there, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Time passes, and things revert to something that looks a lot like normal.  And we will eventually all be Ok, or something that looks a lot like Ok.

Yesterday, I stood and watched my son play flag football, and the sun was warm on my back, and the dry rich smell of fallen leaves filled my lungs, and I looked at the sidelines filled with parents and proud families, and I knew that we would endure, that even this will pass, and for the first time in weeks I knew that I would emerge and eventually step back into the light.  Even this, this disjointed and incomplete ramble, this is progress. 

And the people to whom this might mean anything may never read it, and the people that read it will probably misunderstand my intentions here, and that is just going to have to be Ok too, because I don't know what this is about, don't know my own intentions, I just know I don't want to hide from the light anymore. 

Still Writing,

RP

10-19-15

Comments

  1. Yvonne PullinsOctober 24, 2015 at 2:54 PM

    Love you! I think things seem so bad when you are so far away.

    ReplyDelete

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