I missed stream of consciousness Sunday somehow. I planned to write but forgot amidst my re-entry (post road-tripping) weekend. Instead, I offer stream of consciousness Monday, because emptying out the contents of one’s brain is always a good thing.
I remember when I was in Streetcar Named Desire, my character - her name was Eunice - got into a big showdown with Stanley: I stood barefoot on a landing screaming at him, telling him what I really thought.
I remember it was shortly after the death of my brother and I could feel the grief pouring down my arms, the energy careening down my neck across my back and out the end of my fingers as I pointed at Stanley, shouting and growled the horrible words Tennessee wrote for me to say.
It was then I learned where in my body I carry anger and anxiety, where I flick random daggers of upset off my fingertips.
“It isn’t a pretty sight” I have been known to say when people encourage me to let it out, to release it, to allow them to witness a breakdown.
“You don’t want to see that. You don’t want to see me angry or upset or crying.”
The truth is, I was trained to cover up such emotions because one doesn’t want to make anyone else uncomfortable and goodness knows emotions like grief and anger and desperation are off-putting and people may not like you if you are off-putting and nothing in the world is worse than off-putting.
This is what has been drilled into me. I continue to work on making it acceptable to myself to show myself fully, the variety of emotional extremes having their room to roam. While I am improving, I am miles from perfect.
I am in a time of life with a stack of transitions in front of me like a thick deck of cards or perhaps a mishmash of two or three decks of cards, all scrambled up so as to make no sense.
That’s how my emotions feel.
I have Emma leaving for college which thrills me and scares me.
I have Samuel starting high school which just scares me.
I have a three-thousand mile road trip ahead of me and the last time I attempted such a thing I faced abysmal failure.
It is August again, month of recurring cancer issues and emotional breakdowns and the wobbliness of new beginnings.
Three years ago I found out I had melanoma. I had the biopsy in August, thinking I was just dealing with basal cell carcinoma. It was the second day of school when my physician called me. I was standing in my son’s school office doing I’m not sure what when I took the call.
I wasn’t alarmed until I heard the word “melanoma” and “we’ll get you in right away” and “don’t worry” in quick succession.
I got in my car and started driving. I called people, desperate to share the news - desperate really to simply be heard and to be told “I will be here for you.”
The thing with something like surgery is it is concrete. You have it, you fix it, you move along.
With my anxiety about Emma’s big change it is more ambiguous, more like a floating nerve-ship that floats along my skin, invades my sleep and is so difficult to express well. I don’t remember my mother ever worrying about me. I didn’t worry this much with Katherine.
Perhaps it is the sequential nature of my worry and the way it is stacked in that metaphorical mish-mash of scrambled playing cards. I fear for the joker appearing, for the missing queen of clubs or the jack of hearts or the seven of diamonds.
In four weeks, I will be back in my living room in California with all this behind me and a new set of worries to replace the ones that are leaving.
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This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the guidelines…
Set a timer and write for 5 minutes.
- Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. This is writing in the raw.
- Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
- Link back to the AllThingsFadra.com post (feel free to use the SOC Sunday graphic).
- Add your post below (be sure to use the permalink to your post, not your blog’s URL; and only NEW posts please).
- Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.
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Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people's creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in Fall, 2015 and beyond.
To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.
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