Ever Feel ...

Have you ever felt like: "I'm on top of the world."? Have you ever felt like: "I can do anything now."? Have you ever felt like you could cry if you just sat still? Have you ever felt like you are missing something?

I feel all this right now.

I'm at the height of glory for my life. What I've wanted to achieve for so long has come to me. But, when reality begins to blend in with fiction, your emotions become entangled into the drama as well.

This will sound crazy, I know, but it's so true, just listen. Keep reading you'll understand where I'm going.

I've started writing a book. I didn't know it was a book at first. I would just jot some thoughts down and keep it moving. But, the thoughts turned into ideas. And the ideas turned into sentences and those sentences turned into paragraphs. After a little while, those paragraphs turned into over 40 single spaced pages ... And, I'm not done.

The two main characters in the story are based on real people. One of the characters is someone I've never met. I've only seen her. The other person: is me.

After I realized what I'd been writing, I began to write the story in such a way in which it could yield true human emotion from the reader. I transformed some of the writing to mirror my other essays, in a descriptive and semi succinct way. I've worked on it, day and night. Almost every chance I get, writing and reading, re-writing and researching, I’m on it.

Yet, now I've found myself almost pushing it away... pushing it aside. Not because I'm tired of it, because I'm scared of it. I'm scared of the way it makes me feel. I'm scared of why I'm feeling this way. I'm scared of the length of time I may potentially feel like this: wanting something more.

And I think to myself, "Robyn, it's okay." "It's 'normal' to feel this way at this age, especially if you look at Erickson's Stages of Development." But, then my subconscious speaks up, "Whoa! Hold up son! We don't blend in with the typical 'stamp' of normalcy. We don't go with the grain. We don't accept the status quo!"

So, a battle consumes the most peaceful regions of my mind and questions about the writings relentlessly ensue and strain my ordinarily percipient psyche. I'm blind.

Searching for answers within my own soul and scouring the universe to find a truth that would hopefully emulate mine: That it's okay to feel this way.

I love the story of the two characters I've created. I truly do and I pray one day my life will mirror the tale. But, for now because my emotions are so tied to the story in trying to create a bona fide emotional showcase in the reader, I'm somehow struggling to hold on to my reality and not get caught up in the emotional rollercoaster that is my writing... I'm caught in a metaphysical battle of not allowing reality to meld with fiction.

I told you it was crazy.

But, it's true.

I rush home every night to get to the character I've created in this book and see what she's going to do next. I hate to leave her in the day, because then I'm not with her. When I return, I smile at the way I've lead her fictional life into peace. Yet, when I'm away I search for her in reality. I dream of her in reality. I plead for her existence to be real, for my reality. And though the character is based on a real life person, I'd never really spoke to this woman. I only shared a few words, maybe four in a typical greeting.

I then observed her actions for about 14 hours as we were together on the flight here, but after immigration I never saw her again. So the character I've created is based simply off an observation. Who's to say that even if I should find her again, she would be like the character I've so fallen in love with? What if she’s different? Then is all this fawning and pining over her really necessary?

I wish I could answer this.

So, as I struggle to continue to write and fight off the looming, shrinking distinction between what's real and what's not, my true emotions are toyed with. And I don't like it. I've put a level of writing into this story that I never knew I had in me and now this 'level' is taking it's toll on me. I'm trying so hard to be as emotive as possible that the efforts have turned themselves against me, and onto me. And so I wonder, "Is this normal? Am I really okay? Have I really fallen into a pseudo love with a dream?" Though my subconscious continues to shout out, "Hell naw this ain't normal! And Hell yeah it's okay, you're a writer and some writings do evoke emotion," there are some questions left looming around the barriers of my mortal mind that even it can't answer.

What do I do?

I guess … I shake my self off, dust off the pain, keep going and believe that this one day will happen in my reality as it did in hers.

I've come to learn that through Belief and the act of never failing that belief, dreams do come true. May be not when we want them, but when they need to arrive. So I won't give up. I will keep writing and though I may still struggle a little, I won't let it overcome me. Besides, how could I possibly dream of evoking an emotion in someone I'm only describing to them if I've never felt it myself? I can't.

So, I'll be okay. I will be fine. The pages of this book will continue to turn until the final chapter is written. One day, the element I feel is "missing," from my otherwise "glorious height of existence," will enter my life, and I and we shall be complete.

It's amazing what writing can do to a person. As I’ve written some things that have had me in tears, some have made me laugh and others have allowed me to come to a peaceful realization. And this piece, I see now, it’s one of those, that's given me peace.

At this coup, I smile, sigh a deep breath of relief, chuckle a little and tilt my head to the side for one last key stroke, for this section anyway, I say to you: I'm out.

Peace.


© Robyn K. Mizelle, October 2007