Sometimes, the Words Just Need to Escape.

     If I were a Catholic (or religious for that matter), this post would probably start something like this:  Forgive me Father (*shudder*) for I have been negligent.  It has been nearly two years since the last time I engaged in the written word.  However, since I'm not Catholic (or, well... "religious" in the sense of the word that most use) the beginning of the post would have to change.

     I haven't been writing.  I can say without fail that everything... EVERYTHING... in my life began to suffer the moment I locked the words away inside me.  I have always known what to say.  Then one day, I just stopped.  I stopped talking.  I stopped expressing.  I stopped doing everything that made me, well, ME.  Sure, I still knit and sew.  I still cook dinner and fold laundry and play with my kids.  I still teach them reading and math and how to tie their shoes and where the esophagus is but somewhere in there I was missing from the equation.

    Perhaps, I have been scared of being alone.  My words tend to be seen as some sort of mental assault by other parents.  I don't judge or condemn with them, so I never understood until it was explained to me:  I make them feel lessened because I "talk fancy".  Fancy?  What is fancy about a well-constructed sentence?  What is fancy about knowing the difference between "pacific" and "specific" or "they're" and "their" or any of the other hundreds of things I'd always considered normal?

     So I shoved the words away.  I stopped writing the novels, blog entries, poetry and other articles that were "fancy".  When the words started in my head, I'd lock them up tightly and go knit a scarf.  Or make cookies.  Or plant a tomato.  Or try to teach my kids how to throw a football.  (For the record, they weren't interested in football.)  I made every attempt to be as normal as I could.

     But it doesn't work.  Locking the words away makes me feel like a fraud.  I think that somewhere, somehow, people recognize that I'm hiding something from them.  The words had been contained to 140 characters or less- attempting to blend in with the mundane social media stream- and I had no real voice.


No more.  I'm sitting here now, typing; the cat stares at me accusingly.  She knew the words were in there.  I suppose I knew it also.

It feels so good to be me and empty my brain again.