June begins.

Sunday, June 2nd, 2024.

8:40pm 'Mad Rush' by Philip Glass is playing on Spotify. I've got a coffee near me. The PlayStation is off. My intention is to write. I thought I'd write my first 750 words for the month last night but I started too late and I wasn't willing to not play the video game, to participate in last night's list, to be able to get the words done. Honestly, I should have put writing first. I could have gone to the list late or done something else instead afterward. I need to make writing a part of my everyday life. To do that means that I will have to make some changes.

For instance, I shouldn't be letting my phone distract me right now. But the main thing that has taken my attention for several months or years (since summer of 2018) is the video game. I am not blaming the video game. I know it has been my choice to turn to it as the main distraction. It's easier to turn on the video game and lose myself in it than to turn toward writing - even though every part of me knows that I should have been writing. I could write for an hour and still have all those other hours to play the video game.

But I've let all this time go by, all the hours get away from me, without having written anything at all. I write in my head. I've had opening lines and passages I might have put into entries if I had turned the laptop on and typed them. I didn't though. The thoughts would be pushed out of mind when I'd lose myself in a racing playlist while watching hours of YouTube videos. Gone are the thoughts I would have written about something that had come with me out of dreams, out of a nightmare, out of the memories stirred up. All of it would be dissipated in multiple cups of coffee and hours of racing on GTA Online.

I might think of writing but I wouldn't do it. (I think of writing all the time). It'd get too late or later on, it’d be too early. The day would be too bright and I prefer to write at night. But then the night would be filled with avoidance and distraction. I have to make myself do what I am doing right now. Turn the video game off. Choose to write. And write.

8:57pm I'm not sure how many words it would take for me to get beyond the surface. A couple thousand words? Would it take me that long? Would I even get there with that many? Would it take several days of returning to daily writing before I get even close? I ask this because I know that I am scarred over. I'm suffocating in the layers. But at the same time, I'm an open wound. I'm sensitive to touch. I'm raw with grief. 

I thought I was going to be okay but I'm not sure that I will be.

I think, at this point, the only thing I can do is start writing again and try not to think of all that I didn't write. Try not to dwell on the years of lost time where I could have been writing instead. Don't think of that. But also, don't forget how easily and how quickly that time can go. How it can be over before you know it. And so, with whatever is left of me, whether in the core of me or floating somewhere outside my body, I need to make myself write before I'm lost with no way back. I admit I've wondered if that already happened. But I don't think so or I wouldn't be here right now, typing these words, trying.

I've wanted to save myself. I've known all along that writing saves me. I've known that if I would write every day or most every day, that I would be doing what I was meant to do. Or, at the very least, doing something that makes me who I am which can lead to the things that I could do. I have the tools around me for writing. The blank journals. The pens. The books to inspire me. All the things one could hope or, including the time and privacy for writing.

I turned to oblivion instead.

The writing part of me would come out now and then in private messages with people. I could see the writer wanted to come out, thinking the paragraphs of words were a sign that I would turn from the video game and go to the computer to write. But I didn't. I would express myself sometimes and it would be met with nothing. And that wasn't the problem, really. It was that I knew I should have been writing in my journal.

I should have been putting in my journal - be it the online typed one or even to revive my paper journal - and I didn't. Most of the time, the people I was sharing some of my thoughts or descriptions of things with, weren't actually interested in it. And likely the depth of conversation or the connection I was hoping for, it was not going to happen there. I've had the tendency to do some oversharing with the wrong people. Not a good thing.

I understand that typing out my words and then sharing them on an online blog, as I intend to do soon when I start publishing to my new blog, is oversharing with everyone (or anyone) that might happen to see it, but that has always felt different to me than when I've interacted with people one on one. I've always written in my journals (I had my online journal on LiveJournal for over 20 years before recently deleted it) and I mean my journals whether online or on paper, for myself. I’ve always written for me. Sharing publicly was something that I did for myself as well but I didn't think about who might be reading, for the most part. I'd think of people while I wrote but I still think that's different than writing for myself.

And the thing is, I know from all those years of writing before, from when I also posted it online, that yes, I was oversharing, but I also had dialogue with people who could either relate or wanted to understand. Conversations, friendships and relationships would develop from there. We'd inspire one another or relate to each other through our experiences, discussions and expressed feelings and thoughts.

It felt deeper because it was deeper. Or maybe it was that I took more time to write? I wasn't just reactionary or gasping for air, responding to something, lost in the middle of nowhere, no sight of anything and then I see something - and I reach for it - grasping and gasping - not really thinking or maybe it was that I had been thinking too much and the urgency of feeling has me thinking I've found a confidante in the vast nothingness - but no.

The confidante is myself. I'm the one to write to and to write for. At this point in life, if I ever hope to become what I have felt I should be - a writer - then I should be writing. The ongoing conversation is with myself and where I should be expressing my thoughts and opinions, my hopes and dreams, my experiences and epiphanies - those should be in my journals, in a document or in the paper journal.

If I am to make anything of the words I write or have written, it will be done through more writing, not less.

And that's what it comes down to, I think. I have to write to not only help myself heal and to feel more like myself but also for the fact that I want to reach the level of writing where I actually publish. Not sure if it will be my journals - like the 'Journal Book' project that I was working on - or if I will return to poetry again - I'd love to be a published poet again, or an established one on my own (which means I should write poems, eh?) - but all of this, I know it's part of what I identify or want to identify as and I know that writing and to be a writer has been in my heart since childhood.

11:06pm I started to write last night and mentioned how I started the month off with watching a booktube video of someone reading the first book in 'The Lord of the Rings' and of how it made me think of my parents. I first read the books when I was 11 years old, in grade 6, when I was living with Mom & Bryan. She let me read her massive paperback copy of it and I inhaled it in the hallways of Scott Street Public School. I may not have understood some of it but I was absorbed into the world of it. On my 16th birthday, my Dad gave me a hardbound edition of the books which also included the Appendices and gorgeous illustrations by Alan Lee. When I was watching the YouTube video, I took it out of the bookshelf cupboard where I have it alongside the rest of my Tolkien books, and I could see the bookmark placed where I last left off years ago. I haven't read that book in completion for many years but there was a time when I was younger where I re-read it every year.

This book was also loved by my Dad, who would re-read his own copies of the books, but specifically the one where Frodo was injured at Weathertop, my father marking it as being the same date when my twin sister died. He'd refer to Weathertop to me in conversation. I know that he had the book near him and would read his copies so often that they'd wear out. I was thinking a few minutes ago (the time it takes to walk over to the bathroom, pee and then wash up, return back to my book nook corner and sit down at my desk) that I thought: Weathertop is what he likely related to how he felt when my twin died - mortally injured but he did not die. That he was changed forever from that wound which nearly killed him. I get that now. I can see why he connected to it so. And yes, thinking of both my parents who have been estranged since I was a baby, never knowing of them being together, no memories of that at all, I connect them through their loss of my twin and their love for 'Lord of the Rings' - and so that book is special to me for that reason as well. I think that I should do a re-read of the books for myself soon. I wonder if I could immerse myself in the story the way that I did when I was younger? Could a book take me to that place now? Or have I become too lost to lose myself in that way? I wonder.

I'll be joining the Sunday night (cleanish) racing list that ddayne hosts on the ps4 and so I'm going to stop writing for tonight. I've typed a lot but not written about anything yet. I'm surface writing but I feel like I could have gone somewhere if I'd kept going. For myself, I will start to write every day. I will make the time and take the time to do so. I prefer to write at night so that means I'll have to either carve out the time before a playlist or skip a playlist or do this after a playlist. I'll figure it out. But the point is, I need to tell myself it's okay to miss out on the video game and to put my writing first. This already helped me so much just to even begin to write. This makes me feel more like who I am and who I want to be.

I have so much to write through. The numerous deaths that have occurred in the last two years. My recent lesson about my loneliness. Elaborate on how the truth of being told, "you've been lonely the whole time I've known you" and how my response was, "I've been lonely my whole life" and the truth of me knowing that was because I once was in a womb with my twin and she died when we were babies and I have gone my whole life with the absence of her and I know for a fact that things would have been different if she had lived. The knowledge of knowing you've been missing a part of you doesn't go away. If anything, as life continues on, and losses accumulate, I've felt it all the more. 

I was a kid looking to religion, searching for her in churches before I was even truly told about her, before I understood - and I looked for her in the books and I asked questions and I did not know it was about her. I lived with being compared to a ghost. An angel that could do no wrong and would have done everything better. I was punished for living, fending for myself with broken parents who broke things, including me. I know that loneliness can be consoled in various ways. I know that I can do some things differently. I also know that this old loss that I feel among all the recent loss (and no doubt, more loss to come) is part of me. It's what I carry. It's not new. I come by melancholy naturally. I'm not going to fight it anymore but also, I will not be taken out by it. I have to channel it into my writing. I have to express myself.

I've written enough for tonight but I feel like I could keep going. I'm over 2300 words in and I don't want to stop. But I said I'd go to that playlist and I'd like to post something to declare my intention to write. I'm going to write my way through this.

This is me letting you know that I'm still here.