Whenever I do this – open a page
of this journal after a long, long time – I feel like someone who
hasn't exercised in a long time. (And I know that feeling well.) I
wrote every day for seven weeks, then once a week for two weeks, and
then I fell silent. I wintered, I guess. I managed to write forty pages
in my paper notebook, notes like this:
"A vague sense of unease and discontent. I
didn't leave the house yesterday even though the driveway was cleared
and by afternoon the world was back to normal. . . . Feeling sorry for
myself because I either can't or won't develop as a fiction writer."
(January 24)
"There is a vague unsettling anxiety hanging over me this morning, a
sense of something lost, something slipping away, something I have
failed to do or know or pay attention to. All the vaancies of January
concentrated in this last day of the month." (January 31)
"[Frederick] Buechner describes the father of the brothers Karamazov as
'estranged by his own self-loathing not just from his sons but from
everybody else, including himself and God.' Except for being estranged
from my child, this describes me." (February 10)
How's that for self-absorbed and self-pitying? I had a health scare in
the middle of February (mood swings, difficulty walking, trouble
breathing), underwent some tests that were inconclusive, and resolved
to take better care of myself. I started with the physical, joining a
gym (treadmill walking is much better for my hip joints) and hiring a
personal trainer for a limited set of sessions designed to bring me
back from the brink.
Just before Easter I read something in the online journal kept by one
of my daughter's high school classmates that jolted me. A devout,
church-going young woman who led her school's chapter of the Fellowship
of Christian Athletes, she now found herself in a big, impersonal
public university where her academic obligations and the lure of myriad
opportunities for socialzing seemed to cut her off from her spiritual
side. "I want to pray like I used to," she wrote.
Pray like I used to. I
realized that not only was I not praying like I used to, I was not
praying at all. "Get back to where I once belonged, and all that jazz,"
I wrote on March 18. I got out some of my guides to things spiritual,
and made a list of things and people to pray for.
Easter, of course, coincided with the change in the weather, the annual
change in the quality and intensity of the natural light here in the
northeast. I realized that I had, once again, fallen into a seasonal
depression characterized by an inability to concentrate, a sense of
despair, and a vague unhappiness despite having nothing to be unhappy
about. I'd spent nearly four months in psychic pain because (in a
phrase I devised a few years ago), "I don't know the meaning of life
and I'm overwhelmed by the futility of existence."
This will
not happen to me
again.
I did accomplish a few things over theose months. I put together enough
of a short story
manuscript to submit to Bread Loaf for my annual application, although
it wasn't my best work and I am nervous about its reception by the
admissions committee (notification in three weeks). I participated in
the best local writing workshop I have ever been a part of (an
eight-week session on revision). I lost eight pounds. And I
followed through on a lifelong dream to visit Wyoming.
I leave on June 15.
And I've cleared the cobwebs from this site again.
