A "prompt" response.

It's been over a year since I've been able to sit down and just...write. Life has been too busy, too chaotic, too messy. I've been struggling, struggling to find my voice again, not literally, but to find my inspiration, waiting for my thoughts to organize themselves as I was unable to organize them myself. Like the little blue fishy friend in "Finding Nemo", I "just kept swimming...just kept swimming..." because that's just what you're supposed to do. But in reality, I wanted to do nothing of the kind. I wanted to wash away with the first wave I could jump into. Busy-ness, demands, and worries got the best of me. Concentration was impossible. I had a half-dozen blog posts begun which remained unfinished. Writing was supposed to be my respite, but I simply had no energy leftover to write anything. Desperate, I picked up my phone and summoned "Siri". Here's where her/its advice began...

"Siri", I said, "I need a writing prompt."

Many writing lessons and seminars I've attended suggested all I need is a "prompt" or idea to get those juices flowing again. My request of Siri brought back several website suggestions, and I clicked on one that seemed interesting. This website, however, told me I was too good to use a writing prompt if I really meant business. I didn't need to look elsewhere for inspiration, I just needed to look inside myself and WRITE. Just write whatever was bothering me the most, whatever came to my mind first, even if it made no sense to anyone else but me. Write until I couldn't write anything else for the day, then hit "publish" and walk away from it. So I did it...am doing it, I guess. Doing this is supposed to kick-start my writing mojo and cleanse my weary brain. You've been warned.

To begin with, I'll tell you I am a believer that your thoughts often become your actions, so it's best to be careful of where you let your mind wander. Sometimes, through no fault of its own, a mind wanders into dark and scary places and has a hard time finding its way back. Meaning, I guess, that if you fixate on something bad, scary or otherwise upsetting, sometimes you can't think of anything else. It consumes you. This is precisely what happened. And the thing is, once you feel bad about one thing, everything else feels "off" too.

Now, sometimes, the brain filter that's supposed to tell humans what is and isn't appropriate to say to another isn't always installed or updated, and I understand that. Humans do what humans do, and that's just the way it is. This isn't a boo-hoo post about somebody hurting my widdle feewings. I have enough of a backbone to let most of that stuff slide. Being insulted and hurt is different when the offending person is a friend, or in this case, someone I trusted with my life. It has been nagging me ever since, despite my trying to push it aside. If you have the time to read all this, I'll explain.

A little less than a year ago, I went to my healthcare provider for my annual check up. As I've aged, certain things began happening and I had some concerns I wanted to ask her about. To say the least, it was startling when everything I asked my provider about was summarily dismissed, ignored, brushed off, whatever you want to call it. Not only did she essentially tell me I was imagining things, but that the only thing that would help was, and I quote, "a gym membership."  Specifically, "one I would use more often if I had to pay for it." Really? A few miles on the treadmill was going to make my hair grow back, thick and lovely like it once was? Lifting weights perhaps would clear the perpetual brain fog that became so intense that one morning it even made me forget the way to work? She assumed, like many people do, that since I'm overweight, I was doing nothing to help my own health, despite my most recent medical report stating that I did not have high blood pressure, was not diabetic, and in fact had a very impressive cholesterol level. I requested tests that she deemed pointless. I disagreed, and insisted I WAS NOT FINE. She relented, and consented to *some* of the tests I wanted. When her nurse called me the next day, I asked her, "just for the sake of it, what else could be causing these things to happen?" A valid question, I thought. She turned to refer that question to my provider, who I heard in the background say in an exasperated voice, "Gah! What does she want? Fat pills?"

Um, no. I did not want "fat pills." That wasn't the reason I was there at all. I was miserable and exhausted and worried about so many, many things. What I wanted was someone to listen and take me seriously. What I wanted was a friend who knows my history who could also help me when I needed it most. What I got was dismissed and ignored by a person who, for nearly fifteen years, I trusted implicitly to care for me. Needless to say though, it's taken me some time to balance this in my brain. It sucked. Had she been this way behind my back all this time and this was the first time I'd heard it? Maybe. Should I say something to her? (yes) Did I? (Eventually.) I was so disappointed and angered by her behavior, I didn't know what to do. For months, whenever my brain cleared a little, this was all I could think about.

I remember a poem I saw once when I was a little girl. It was printed on a small, yellowed card with some intricate designs along the edges, and tucked carefully beneath the glass which covered the dresser in my mother's bedroom. It's only through the magic of Google that I found the author's name: Mary Bachelor. It goes like this:

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2. Go bury thy sorrow, the world hath its share;
   Go bury it deeply, go hide it with care;
   Go think of it calmly, when curtained by night;
   Go tell it to Jesus, and all will be right.
3. Go tell it to Jesus, He knoweth thy grief;
   Go tell it to Jesus, He’ll send thee relief;
   Go gather the sunshine He sheds on the way:
   He’ll lighten thy burden—go, weary one, pray.
4. Hearts growing aweary with heavier woe
   Now droop ’mid the darkness—go comfort them, go!
   Go bury thy sorrow, let others be blessed;
   Go give them the sunshine, tell Jesus the rest.

For the most part, this is good advice. I am fully aware that there are people near and dear to me who are suffering far more than I, so I make every effort to be the sunshine whenever I can. But it can be cathartic to express the things that are bothering you, so now and then, I do. I typically like to keep my blog light-hearted and fun, and it will be again, as funny things happen in my life all the time. But the truth is, life isn't all light-hearted and fun and sometimes, the dark thoughts move in and threaten to put down stakes. When my thoughts have fixated on something that has upset me to the point of distraction and I can't seem to find my way back, writing it out until I can't write about it any more actually helps. It feels right to say I'm at the last paragraph in this post. I'm going to follow the advice I was given; hit "publish" and walk away. We'll see if it does anything for the mojo.

Oh, and thanks, Siri.

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