There are a lot of times when I want to censor Libby.  Times when I want to go back and delete and edit and treat it like one of my fiction pieces.  I have been reminded recently how much of myself I have put into Libby - 'diary entries, letters of love, my notes on love and life.'  It's scary to think that my thoughts over the years have survived and that someone could get to know me without meeting me.  That's the internet for you, right?

But what about when you meet someone new?  Do you share all of the bad with the good?  The whole blog as it were?

I brought up Libby with both a coworker and an old work friend this past week, no relation to each other, no relation to what I've been writing about lately.  I described Libby as a great way for me to clear my head or to get into the proper head space for writing.  In both cases I brought up wanting to create a separate place to share my writing.  Neither person asked any follow up questions about Libby and I was relieved because I didn't want to share it with them.

So if I don't want to share Libby with new people, who do I expect to see it?  I certainly don't link it anywhere to drive traffic.  I have started going back and adjusting the labels, mostly so that I can find content about writing or family with just a quick search.  Most of the labels I had were continuations on a rant or clarifications on my feelings. I guess then that I write Libby for myself to see, to document and remember that with which I struggle with.

Labels: blogs, Libby, writing

You may be expecting further reactions to last night's comments, but this isn't a gossip column.

IMPORTANT CELEBRATORY ANNOUNCEMENT: Despite all signs that I shouldn't be weighing myself this week, I continued the never ending science experiment of trying to be healthy.  I set a goal for myself at the beginning of 2016 and today I met it!!! I lost just over 25 lbs, not including all the times I lost weight to put it back on. I'm very happy about this and will have a follow up post later.

Labels: be more positive, take care of yourself

You're not haunting me. I was free.  I tried not to linger too long on memories of you and us.  You showed up in my dreams occasionally, but you had been for so long it wasn't much different.  My world fell apart and got better and fell apart all over again without any connection to you.  So much went wrong, so much that I've been too embarrassed to even allude to on Libby.

Before you started cutting ties, you seemed like you were finding yourself more.  You seemed happier.  I never knew if you intentionally meant to leave certain ties in tact until you cut those too, but they allowed me to paint this picture of you moving on and being happy.  I don't know if that helped, since my life was going to shit and all, but I have always wanted the best for you so that's the picture I painted.

Your comment did not hurt me the way haunting implies.  I didn't expect you to reply, but I wanted to make you acknowledge yourself.  It's childish, but I couldn't convince myself that you would come back here, that you weren't actually a troll from Singapore.  That sounds made up, but Libby attracts a variety of foreigners according to her statistics and I can't figure out why there are over a 100 views from Poland in the last month and 10 from Singapore in the past week alone.

Going through all those bad times did allow me to start over.  I stripped myself bare, went off all my meds, detoxed and started again.  I'm building myself back up like Kenneth did when he got fired from the Page Program.  The dreams, while mostly sexual, have been resurfacing thoughts of you because I have to find a way to move forward with that piece of myself.  I haven't figured that out yet, which is why I still reference you throughout Libby.  I don't want to hurt you, but I'm not going to censor myself here.

Labels: comments, dreams, Libby, my response, past love

"The nights were mainly made for saying things that you can't say tomorrow day." - Arctic Monkeys

There's something about their music that makes me feel like it is made for the night. The beats coupled with the lyrics, perhaps?  There's a way that it makes you feel like you're out in the cold, crisp night air that is enchanting. Listening to their music as I fall asleep makes me feel like I can appreciate the full breadth of the night.

There's this connection that writers have with the night, with this sudden outpouring of words that would dry up if you waited until morning to put them on paper. I've never thought of music coming out of artists the way words and sentences and scenes appear as writers drift to sleep.

I've been making playlists for different stories I have.  Songs that remind me of the time and place the story originated in me.  Songs that remind me of the characters and the mood of the stories.  Each character lives in my head, has a piece of me in them in such a way that I could never imagine them liking music that I don't.  Sometimes writers talk about hearing their characters talking in their heads.  They can hear those voices so clearly, but there are times when the voices go quiet and you have to craft a way to make them speak to you again. They come to you in the middle of the night, after you're exhausted from failing to fall asleep.  They start speaking and you forget why you wanted to sleep in the first place.  You feel crazy, but you love it.

“The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.” - Andre Gide

Labels: Andre Gide, Arctic Monkeys, how many secrets can you keep, night time, quotes, writers, writing

For some, dreams can have a lasting, memory like quality to them. A dream about a lover cheating can bring a person a seemingly unshakeable anger toward their lover - at least for a few hours or days while that person tries to rationalize the dream. As Gael García Bernal's character Stéphane says in The Science of Sleep, "In dreams, emotions are overwhelming."

A simple fabrication you create while trying to digest all the day's information, references to the past week, observations about the future. Once it stirs emotions, a dream can sour a day, create distance in a relationship or in my case, on a weekly basis, stir old feelings to the surface and fuck them every which way. You see, I have been having dreams about my ex again. They're dreams about adventures,  betrayal, and false memory-like feelings of love.

We didn't end things in a firestorm. We came to an agreed upon decision filled with logic and supported by facts. Facts and logic my head is well versed in, but my heart, ah my heart. Treacherous, emotional, easily swayed to love, my heart. Add a few emotionally crafted dreams to my reason and logic, and no historically documented farewell can hold up to this feeling of longing.

We were in each other's lives for over five years, yes, but we have been completely out of each other's lives for months. While there is much that I cherish from those years, there's much that I regret as well. Distance, ill fated decisions, moods, resentment, and yet, through it all, love. I support our decision to separate with reason and logic on my side, and with love we wished for happiness. So with love, one must support the other's need for a complete and total end of the friendship that laid the foundation for love to grow.

Is it the lack of familiar contact that allows for longing to resurface? Does time allow for facts and reason to blur? Or are the emotions created in dreams really that overwhelming?

Labels: dreams, emotions, Gael Garcia Bernal, longing, The Science of Sleep, We used to be friends.