on restlessness and poetry

Writing is hard.

A couple years ago, I made a commitment to myself, to write something (for me) every single day. It doesn’t have to be much - if all I can muster is a sentence or two of journaling, or a few bullet points about a story, then so be it - but it has to be something. This past January, I hit my two-year mark of writing every single day. It’s important to me to keep the streak going.

When my life is busy and I’m too drained to muster much creativity - and that’s a lot of the time, lately - I end up journaling more often than anything else. For a really long time that was something I never did, because I’ve never been able to write on paper fast enough to keep up with my own thoughts, and it ended up being a frustrating exercise. I know people who keep journals really well, and that’s always impressed me so much, but I assumed for many years that it wasn’t for me (no matter how much it appealed to my inclination towards obsessive record-keeping). However, sometime in the summer of 2017, I realised that journaling could be done digitally, as I can type a lot faster than I can print! Since then, I’ve done it surprisingly often, when there’s too much on my mind and I need to get it out.

A funny thing has started to happen with all of this in the last year or so. Much like I went most of my life without being much of a journaler, I’ve never been big on writing poetry. I don’t often read it, either, if I’m honest - poetry has just always been a rare part of my literary diet. But every so often I’m struck by a particularly good phrase or metaphor while I’m trying to express myself, or otherwise I seem to feel some kind of need for a certain rhythm or cadence to really nail down a feeling. So sometimes, what would otherwise be just another frustrated journal entry ends up as a freeform poem instead, often written late at night in a note on my phone.

I frequently struggle with whether or not to share these poems with anyone. For one, as I said, I’m not a poet by nature, and I don’t really know how good they are - how well they actually evoke the feelings I want them to. Most of the time I don’t even know for sure if they’re done, or when to tell that they are. For another, they’re often quite personal! Which actually isn’t the problem in itself - the problem is my lifelong tendency to overshare. Recently, I’ve been trying to get a handle on that. I know that my openness with my feelings (especially negative ones) can be overwhelming or alienating to people, especially people who don’t know me well, and I don’t want to chase anyone away or make them feel like I’m unloading on them unfairly. There’s also the fact that in the last five years, a lot of my stress has been due to matters relating to my entire family - and while I tend not to mind sharing personal issues with people, I know not everyone feels the same, and I know that my family doesn’t necessarily want all of this stuff aired publicly. I’m a strong proponent of destigmatising negative emotions and allowing people to communicate freely about the shitty parts of their lives, in the interest of stronger relationships and less stressful lives… but I also respect others’ desire for privacy.

That said, though: I wrote this poem sometime in the last couple months, late one night while trying to vent those feelings of restlessness and unease I mentioned earlier. When I finally fell asleep, I didn’t even think it was finished, but when I came back to it later I actually liked it a lot. After fixing a few typos I felt like it was really effective. It’s an attempt to encapsulate the kind of buzzing discontent that comes with a lot of ongoing health problems and financial stresses and general, unavoidable Life Stress, and for once I think I’ve done a really good job of articulating that.

I want to get out of here.

That’s the thing, though:
I don’t. Not really.

Well, yes and no.

Dorothy had it right when she said
there’s no place like home.
By and large, home is the only place
I ever really want to be.
Home is people, sure, but it’s also
places - your own bed, your favourite chair, a yellow front door and a cluster of plants
And it’s feelings - I’m here, I’m safe,
I can relax completely. Home is
where you can take off your bra
sit with your knees spread wide
and fart.

I have never liked leaving home.
(I grew up and realised I had separation anxiety.)
I’m learning to do it anyway–
little adventures out into the world,
bit by bit–
and that can be fun,
but home is a relief. I can breathe out
and that spring that’s been coiling tighter and
tighter
inside my chest
can finally unwind.
The tension flows out.

But the fact is,

I’m bored and I’m tired
of being tired and bored.
(Original, I know.)
It’s just that
everything is kind of shitty and kind of hard and
real life turns out to be a lot of routines
and jobs you don’t really want
and if you don’t even know what you do want
the days get pretty long.
You’ve been trod on and roadblocked and, okay, you’re not not happy any more,
(not compared to a couple years ago-
god, you were a mess a couple years ago)
but you’re only really doing well as long as you don’t

have time

to think about it.

When you think, you get...
worried. Doubtful. Existential.
You reach out to touch what you’ve built and
you find it delicate, like tissue
It doesn’t take much to poke it full of holes.
You wonder how much time you’re wasting.

You wonder when you’ll finally figure out
the big secret,
the thing that will finally make you happy.
Content, even.
You just want peace.
(You think about your parents
and amend ‘when’ to ‘if.’)

I don’t know when I shifted
from first person
to second.
Is it really so hard for me to talk about
all these bad feelings? Am I
trying to abstract myself? Transfer ownership?
Why don’t I even want to allow myself
the luxury of admitting that I’m lost?

Is it because right now I’m a little scared
that I’ll always be lost? That
no matter what I say,
what I do,
I won’t find my way–
that maybe there isn’t even
a way to be found?

When I say
I want to get out of here
what I mean is that I’m where I belong
and yes, my socks are everywhere and
I’m the one who waters the plants,
but nothing feels quite right. This house is full of
stress and anxiety and unfulfilled plans
and you can feel the atmosphere hum with it all.
It’s home but not like it was before
and I’m not strictly happy and
I miss simpler days.