Adrift. This word has been popping up for me in the last couple of weeks. It seems I have a connection right now with others that are feeling adrift…for different reasons, emotionally, creatively, financially.
I have felt emotionally and creatively adrift. Without my regular accountability and spiritual connection from my writing peers over the summer break I have fallen into a bit of a funk. I have only stepped foot on the sand once this summer and I nearly didn’t do that because anxiety and panic almost shut the whole day down for me. I’m an avid self-isolator at the best of times but this funk got me good.
I sat down tonight at the computer to fix up some invoicing for my business (a girl’s gotta get paid) and I had the inspiration to write. Well … nothing came. So, I decided to print out what I have so far of my 50,000-word memoir, to see what it looked like in person. It felt really good watching my words come out of the printer. I felt accomplished. Then the printer stopped. What!? I thought it was broken, but no. Turns out the 17000 odd words I’d written looks like a glorified instruction pamphlet for a coffee machine. It’s thin. It has no heft like a book should. It’s only 17 pages. But like good coffee it has depth and flavour.
If you feel adrift right now know that there is a shore or a rock that your tiny crumbling raft will crash into and break apart leaving you all alone to lick your wounds (or swim for your life) and realise that you were the strong bit …not the raft.
Here’s the prologue of my book.
Prologue
I found myself entering the third decade of my life with a sense of complete loss. I had always had a sense of loss. “Born on a Wednesday.” Mum would say. “Wednesday’s child is full of woe … Look at that bottom lip! Always pouting.”
“I want to go home,” I would sob into my pillow at night as a child. In all the houses I had lived in, none had ever felt like home. And there were 14 houses before my 30th birthday. That feeling of wanting to go home never quite left me. That feeling of loss.
Raeleen is a quiet student. A pleasure to teach. She could apply herself better to improve her results. My teachers would write on my straight A report card.
“You’re in turmoil and you need to open up,” said my Aunty with a penchant for the supernatural and occult. “Let me into your mind. You need cleansing.”
So, I found myself on New Year’s Eve 1999, wondering about the future. Wondering if the internet would implode at midnight due to some bug in the system and send the world into chaos. Did we all just exist in some sort of matrix? What was my purpose in life? And why had Blue (Da- ba- dee) been number 1 on the music charts for the last 9 weeks? Life just didn’t make sense. A shift in the mood of the room broke me out of my pondering.
“Happy birthday to me.” I whispered a toast to myself and drained the last of my wine.
“Three! Two! One!” There was a collective pause as we all waited to see if the power went out. “Happy New Year!” We bellowed our way into the new millennium with much hugging, kissing and backyard fireworks. Fresh drinks flowed.
Having checked my kids were ‘safely’ upstairs while winding down off the excitement of yet another party night in our house, I stumbled out to the pool deck with another drink in hand. I gazed up at the waning crescent moon hanging like a bright yellow banana in the sky and thought
Fuck
This
Shit.
***
Soul Scribbling 