Anyone Seen My Muse?

I haven't been updating my blog and I'm ashamed. Writing used to come so easy to me. It's why I started this blog, afterall.

While packing up in preparation for my move, I found a small, black moleskin notebook. Just seeing it evoked memories for me. I used to carry it everywhere and scribble down thoughts. Ideas on books, pro and con lists, general bitching and moaning, the typical day-to-day rantings of, well, me.

I hadn't looked inside my little notebook in years - three years to be precise. As I peeled through the pages one-by-one, the evolution of the past years became clear. The first entry in the book was simple, dated December 25, 2004, and said, "It's a beautiful day, and I'm truly blessed." The more I page through, the more I see it. The exhaustion, the frustration, the sadness. On several pages, I see sad, single lines or simple poetry expressing a need to breathe. It was like I was holding my breath in some entries. Even my handwriting became sloppy and nearly unreadable.

The small book chronicled 4 years in my life. Beginning with my second year of marriage, to my life in Florida, the purchase of a house, the selling of a house, the migration to a town up north that I had never laid eyes upon. Each page was filled with the contents of my head - from loving that I was leaving Florida, which I hated, to hating that my husband was becoming more distant, "working" more, not speaking, and acting odd. I knew what was happening. I just didn't have the breath to say anything. I sat back and watched - I watched it all unfold.

I watched his "relationships" grow. First, percocet, then oxycontin, then methadone, all the time "supporting" these relationships with alcohol. I watched as a $150 week alcohol habit and $200 a day pill habit began to form (this, of course, I didn't realize for a long while). I took a second job, working from 8am to almost midnight 7 days a week. I thought it was the mortgage that was breaking us, then after selling the house, I thought it was my spending - groceries, bills, lunches, etc. I just couldn't understand how we could be living paycheck-to-paycheck with the salaries we both made. I just couldn't "see". I didn't want to.

As the pages progressed, so did the years, and I came to my final entries. As I read each entry my stomach tightened. My eyes began to water. There it was, the sickness. I read the entry I wrote the night after I found him unresponsive next to me in bed. The entry I wrote while sitting sleepless in ICU waiting for him to wake. Shaking penmanship and teardrops stained my entry as I wrote, "Am I dreaming?" The ink had faded and run down the page. I had saved him, and in the process lost myself. I continued to read, through the pages detailing his time in detox, rehab, and the sleepless nights holding him as he shook and screamed. All the while my light - the muse that had helped me write with such openness and intensity, with humor and heart - began to fade. My eyes began to dull. And breathing didn't quite seem needed anymore.

And then there it was, my last entry made on March 2. Three weeks after it all came to a head. My handwriting - never the greatest being left-handed - had turned almost illegible. It said, "He left. I can't breathe. Oh God I can't breathe." The end of my little book - or so I thought.

It, of course, wasn't the end of my story. So much has happened in the past three years and I've learned to breathe again. I realized that not only had I lost my breath through my relationship with him, I had also lost my identity and my voice. Never one to shy from anything - I shied from him. And that was wrong. I feel lucky to look back on my past and realize how fortunate I am now, but there's still something missing. That light that once glowed so brightly within me is still dim. I'm hoping to get it back again and thinking this blog is helping. So for now this will do, and I'll just be happy to sit back and take a breath.