Ok, so I’ve been away from the writing thing a couple of days. Day 4 challenge was a hard one for me. In fact, I had so much resistance to doing it that I got drunker than I have been in a really long time and went to a very dark place. I think. It’s very fuzzy. After a certain point, I just actually have no idea what I did. There may have been some mooning, I honestly can’t say. But it made for a horrible next day and a reaffirmation that I’m just not the drinking kind anymore. Not like I used to be.

I’ve railed against the idea of taking a vacation for a long time, because I want my travels to be a part of my life, not to be some way to step outside of my reality. I’m starting to look at alcohol as being kind of the same thing. I’m really working hard on facing those aspects of my character that make me uncomfortable, to reconcile my whole self with the parts. All of the parts. And drinking just provides me not only a reason to not face things, it doesn’t take me somewhere light and comfortable. Is it my present state of mind that dictates this? Coupled with the conviction that alcohol abuse may have contributed to my dad dying of liver cancer? Even if it didn’t, it definitely contributed to the frequency of his bringing home cold kentucky fried chicken for dinner approximately 4 hours after we’d gone to bed…

But while I’m filled with self judgement and recrimination as to my behaviour while as close to black out drunk as I’ve honestly ever been in my life (my curse/blessing has always been that I remember pretty much everything I do when I am drunk. Perhaps that’s another reason I don’t have as much fun with it as others might.), which is such a rarity that it terrifies me when it happens, I’m kind of elated at the same time.

If I am so scared that I will nearly poison myself with alcohol to keep from writing, then I am definitely headed in the right direction. And so I did day 4 and it was hard and it was personal and no, I’m not going to share it here. But day 5..

Day five’s writing thing is about last lines. If you only had one week to live, what would you write? At first I thought, oh damn, this is going to be hard. But then it wasn’t. And here it is.

Day 5 –
There’s a last time for everything. It seems as though this is mine. I think even now, I’m doubting the reality of this moment. As though I expect there will be a last minute reprieve and I’ll discover that I am the anomaly I always suspected I might be.
I don’t want my last thoughts to be puzzling over the title of that book I read, the one about a duck and a guy who was immortal. Until he died. Those were his last words, ‘well, I was immortal until I died’. I feel exactly the same way. Except I still can’t wrap my head around the possibility that it’s actually over. Or what the title of that book is.
Dang it! I want my last words to be something clever, something witty and timeless and the perfect representation of the life I lived. Which, to be fair, wasn’t always clever or witty or, it would seem, timeless. However it might feel that way now.
The days that felt like they lasted forever and the years that went by in a flash..I was lucky, so lucky. Where I was born, who my parents were, how they raised me, with laughter and reason. Even when it was darkest, my da taught me that there was humour to be found, even then. Especially then. I could read before I could talk, I could swim before I could walk. And I remembered everything that ever happened. Everything I ever saw..well, almost everything…what was that book called? He was immortal because he drank moonshine…and there was a duck…
I think of all the final scenes for the great characters. Rutger Hauer in Bladerunner..’all those moments lost, like tears in rain…time to die..’ or Voltaire, when asked if he would renounce satan, responded, ‘now now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies..’. And all those who never got a chance to understand what or how or why this might be happening. How lucky am I to get to see it, eyes open, heart open, mind full of…

It seems funny to me, now that I’m here, I’m having a hard time remembering the not-so-awesome parts. It makes me wonder how I never noticed their irrelevance before. How I spent so much time on the minute details of my existence, rehashing conversations, confrontations and interactions like an obsessive. As though sifting through them over and over in my head however many years later would alter them into something I could walk away from with a smile on my face, rather than disgruntledness in my heart.
How unimportant, how insignificant they are when compared to all the sunsets, all the full moon beach parties, the ocean on my toes, the wind in my hair, the grass tickling barefeet. When I compare them to that kiss I got in the desert. The moment of moist lips and a mindful heart opening itself to his at the feel of his fingers on my dusty skin. My face in his hands, my mind nowhere but right there, those are the times I have best.
All of these moments I gathered and carried, experiences of joy and giddy and now. Right now. That’s what I have to take with me and to leave behind. Is it enough?
It’ll have to be.

OH!!! The book is called Fup!!! I don’t remember who wrote it though. Ask me next time….