On Writing When You're Not Sad.

It's a frustrating thing to be happy — and it seems to infect most people. There's this inkling feeling that it won't last. It's painted best in Robert Frost's poem,  "Nothing Gold Can Stay."

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

My best writing, or at least, the writing that I connect to most emotionally I write when I'm so sad. That's an interesting concept, too, that in my mind, best equals emotional. When I have too many feelings welling up inside me I can't help but emit them through writing, through performing, through singing. I cannot help myself. Perhaps it's the notion of something good must come from this pain; I have to create something beautiful, something real, something heartfelt to make this moment have more meaning than just wallowing alone in my: "I am hurt. It hurts. It will pass."

But, why, why can't the same be said when I'm happy? Why is it harder for me to express my joy creatively? Is it the distraction of how happy I am, I don't want to reflect on it for fear that it will dissipate before me? There are too many questions.

Periodically I look back on this blog so I can see who I am or was throughout the years. I have often noticed the amount of writing I did or didn't do during years of hardship and during times of happiness. I can so directly see the correlation between my writing and my relationships. At the start of 2010 I wrote a lot. Not coincidentally, my longest relationship ended. And, then the Fall of 2010 happened, my writing slowed to a trickle — I was in a new relationship. Flash to 2012, I wrote a ton again. That was a hugely difficult year full of car accidents, breakups, job transitioning — the gambit. And then again my writing picked up as I picked up and moved to LA. Spring of 2014 happened and again, a flood. It's frustrating to know how much my writing is a reflection of my emotional state. I love what I write when I am sad. I don't love being sad, though; and I don't want to manufacture emotion. I can't anyway. I've tried.

But even right now, as my life is on an upswing, I am all smiles, yet full of lackluster uninspired stories. I have people in my life I'm excited to see, and that are excited to see me. I have parents that love me, that call me unexpectedly, that fly across the country to spend time with me. I have siblings that are kind, that go out of their way. And while it's not as if we don't carry our baggage or throw one another under the bus on occasion, those moments pale in comparison to how my throat chokes up when I think of what my life would be like if they didn't love me like they do.

So, here I am, waiting for it all to fall apart so I can write a heartfelt blog post, script, poem, song, etc.

NO!

That Frost poem always left me feeling so negative. Now though, I'm attempting to grasp how, yes, things fade, but other things take their place. When a flower blooms and dies, in a few weeks or days, or whatever, time happens, and a new bloom takes its place. Life will always be up and down.

That's comforting.

But God, is it tiring to have all those feelings and be writing and emitting so much. It has to stop. There has to be respite from it. So many writers (comedians, screenwriters, novelists, etc) get their material from things they're pissed about, things that have hurt them, or how they have been wronged. It can soften the blow, or cause you to relive it. You just have to know from where it's coming and to where it's leading you. And sometimes, just sometimes it's better to look at the world without a critical eye.

It's too taxing on your soul otherwise.

vultures.

Her name was Vanessa, and she doesn’t want me anymore. Had she ever? Every day after us I ask this question. Her hair was more blonde than strawberry; her face was pale, and she was everything. I miss her.

We were happy. It was like a disease, and it engulfed her. She had eaten us up every day for six years and now she was through — through gorging herself on our feelings, and our passion, and our sick, obsessive “us.” She didn’t want to have me anymore.

People don’t do this. They don’t talk about relationships like an insufferable meal. Even the best thing isn’t something you want every single moment of every single day. You need variety, and she stopped fighting it; she stopped fighting that urge to eat shitty take-out. 

David was shitty take-out. And she knew it. She knew it, I knew it, and she didn’t care. Because, that’s how we are. That’s how every fucking person is. If it wasn’t her, it would have been me. The truth is, it could have so easily been me eating shitty take-out. But because of how timing works, I get the benefit of being the one left. Whatever benefit that is.

I read a passage recently in one of those self-help books that really only helped the person who wrote it feel better when they were down. My mom sent it to me after she found out about David and Vanessa. Vanessa had been the one to tell her. That’s the fucking balls of it. That gaul. The fucking nerve. I had successfully avoided the preying eyes of my mother from two-thousand miles away during the first weeks of our split. My mother, a subtle vulture, who just can’t stop herself from snapping at my dying body in the middle of the Mojave. 

The passage said this…it said: Most people who don’t look life squarely in the eye want to avoid what’s making them unhappy.

Vanessa was unhappy, until she wasn’t — until she looked me in the eyes.

She was a mouth, and I was the lukewarm taste that that mouth couldn’t help but spit out the window from the apartment we used to share.

I live here now. Alone. And it’s ok. She left mostly everything, so now I have a floral bedspread I don’t want, a key holder sign that signifies that I’m “home” in cursive, her contact case, and a million other pieces of her. I don't wear contacts. 

Her soft ruby lips, flakey from being in the sun too long, the freckles that dusted across her collarbone, the delicacy of her fingers brushing along the ridge of my brows moments after an uncontrollable desire to press everything about ourselves together. She would kiss me, and every few minutes, she would separate our faces, look at me, like she was trying to memorize me, and then just as I was ready to kiss her again, she would breathe me in, wrecking me for anyone else. I couldn't believe she was mine. 

And I should have known. 

Why? 

I don’t know.