Childhood is a Shadow

I wish I could stab my childhood with my finger and poke it in the chest...tell it to go to its room and not come out until it's ready to apologize and mean it, but instead I sit smack dab in the middle of my NOW (adult life) and watch it run around me like a hyper puppy...as if I'm a coffe table collecting dust and empty bottles and it's pissing on my carpet and chewing the legs on my furniture...teething...always teething.

How long will I give my past permission to ramble through my trash and string it all over the floor and bark at all my guests before I put it outside? Show it who is boss once and for all.

Every time I turn around I'm tripping over it. It's stays on my heels. When is it going to grow up and lie on the porch and let me scratch it behind the ears and feel some sense of comfort in the act?

This week...I hit the wall...you know the proverbial barricade of memories that boxes us in on all sides. I'm too old for this...I should be stronger than this.

I felt desperate to figure out who I am as a writer. I just don't know anymore. I keep saying...oh it doesn't matter, but it does matter to me. I want to know. I started writing because I was stuck at home, caring for two ill parents and I couldn't leave the house without feeling guilty...so, I wrote and let the words carry me away, but then...people said they felt something in my words...and I learned I could connect with other people through writing and I opened my heart and just wrote and wrote and got positive feedback. Then, I decided to try to get published and I did it..started paying attention to what was being published and tried to write for the markets. I wrote sci-fi, horror, romance, poetry, flash fiction and made writer friends who did the same and I tried to get into the markets they were going for and write like what I was reading or ditch it all and write in my own little crazy way, but missing one very important thing...my heart.

There are a few things I've published that are important to me, but most things I've published are not...they are just one more story or one more poem in my stack of pub creds.

I hate that I feel that way about my own work. I hate that some days I wonder if I'm just trying to fit in with a clique in my own way...a clique of horror writers or flash fiction writers or poets.

It isn't that I don't appreciate my writing friends...I do appreciate them and admire them...what I'm having trouble with is looking in the mirror and answering my own questions about why I am submitting my work to a specific market or writing a certain story...because too often my answer is...well, so and so, said this was a top-notch market and I want to start cracking into top tier places...so, I read what they publish and tried to write like that. OR well, at this writing forum we had a prompt and a little writing contest and I wrote a story for that....so I could get feedback from other writers and be a part of a little friendly competition. Very seldom do I hear myself say: I wrote this piece, because it wouldn't leave me alone until it was on paper...because when I touched the keys...the music just came to me like a gift and I felt like I was singing and I enjoyed myself and a piece of my heart lives inside that poem or story.

I wrote a very personal piece this week and it hurt, but felt good at the same time, because it was real...it meant something to me...it belonged to me. The piece isn't long enough and needs a lot of work, but it brought me back to where I began and it feels good to own up to that.


(I probably should proofread this post before sticking up for the world to read, but I'm not going to ...because if I do...I'll delete it completely and for some reason, I feel better having written it...so, it must have needed to be written. All I can say is...I hope you can forgive my typos, if they are there.)