the dirty laundry show

Hi there, blog. 

It’s been a minute. 

I’ve missed you. 

I miss the days when my brain used to field idea after idea about storylines, eager for any spare second to work them out on the page. It’s not that I don’t still get ideas from time to time. I’ve got a running note on my phone filled with plots and plans, one-liners to get me started. But now, every time I get a spare moment, something stops me. In all these months, I haven’t been able to decipher what, exactly, that “thing” is. 

Don’t get me wrong, life hasn’t been the same without you. I haven’t quite been able to recognize myself apart from our work together. Over the last decade – and in countless old-fashioned paper journals before that – you have provided me a space to process tough moments, record memorable connections, smooth out the season’s rough edges. I needed that. In so many ways, the action of putting pen to paper (or fingertips to keyboard) made me who I am – a writer and proud of it.  

Somewhere along the way, though, I lost focus on the reason why our partnership is so important in the first place. I forgot that, while you’re a piece of my natural framework, you aren’t the framework itself. I exist separately from the “writer” label. It’s just one tool I’ve been given to make sense of this place. I needed some space and time to remember that and get to know the “me” I am beneath the label. 

But I also need to take responsibility for my abuse and misuse of you. We all have a desire, deep down, to be seen and recognized for the things we do well. I’m certainly a product of the “everyone gets a trophy” age, endlessly hungry to be handed rewards and “attaboys” for every “special” thing I accomplish. I’m not really sure when, along our journey together, I began to convince myself that you could be my ticket to fame and fortune, the means to a lucrative financial end. All of those dreams caved in on themselves pretty quickly, and then I just felt like you betrayed me. 

Finally, all this time later, I’ve begun to accept that maybe global celebrity isn’t in the cards for me. I don’t know why I was born with this infernal determination to win such attention (or is it in all of us?) When I really think about it, all I really want is what we once accomplished as a team: to say the honest things that are hard to say so that anyone who recognizes themselves in our pages won’t feel quite so alone. The older I get, the more I realize how supremely, untenably difficult being human truly is, and the more I so deeply appreciate Jesus’ simple promise to be with us. 

I used to chase the promise of shiny miracles, signs and wonders. Now, all I really want is a trusted companion who’ll still be there by my side at the end of each day’s labor to assure me that all will be well. I’m tired – exhausted, more like – in my deepest soul from the relentless struggle to make myself Someone. To figure out how to “make it” and have things and be important to other people. It’s costing me everything and leaving me with nothing. I want to get back to the basics. You and me wrestling the right words to squeeze this very human experience into a tidy paragraph. From the beginning, that was all you ever offered me, and now I finally understand it was more than enough. 

Let it be enough. 

Until next time,

L