and I gunned for your love right through the sun

137,627 words into the epic unpublishable mess. I "won" NaNoWriMo on November 10th and just kept going. I don't know how long it will take to finish. I don't know how much of myself I'm going to have left at the end.

I expected depression. I expected pain. I expected random flashes of anger, I expected hopelessness, I expected inchoate loss as I remembered days of love and days of grieving. I expected all of these things, I thought I was prepared.

I didn't expect to miss you this much.



After all, you've been gone from my life long enough that I'd forgotten many of our conversations. Oh, the general feelings, the general mood, I've retained, but the actual words said, the moments shared, those had slipped my mind. I'm finding memory's razor is sharp, sharp as winter sea air, sharp as scalpel sin.



What I'm saying is that I expected it to hurt, but I didn't expect to feel you so keenly once more. Simultaneously present and missing, close and impossibly distant, and it's striking me as profoundly unfair all over again.



I am broken. I know that. I have spent too long, especially of late, surviving in the interstitial spaces of my own head. I know I need those around me who not only see my good points, but see and accept my broken places. You did that.

You once told me that there was nothing I could not share with you, no secret, no urge, no memory, no nightmare, that you would not accept. That I could tell you anything, absolutely anything, and you would love me still.

I relied on that.

Then you left.



And it's been years. Years of healing, years of processing, years of seclusion, years of putting myself together after I tore my life apart for you. There are things I lost that I will never get back, and I had made my peace with it...until this.

And I'm still writing. And I'm still discovering. And now I'm wondering how close my memories of you are going to get before I can leave you behind, once again, where you should be, as you are nowhere to be found.

"You drove me to the fire
and left me there to burn..."

Now I just wait for the fire to burn down, and it's going to take some time, because all I have in memory's spaces are accelerants and tinder. Gods help us all.

But I get through this, my lost love. I survive. More symbols carved into my bones, into my flesh, more scars, more pain behind my eyes...but you didn't kill me when you left, and your memory won't kill me now. I'll get through this. But it's going to hurt like a wicked bitch until I do.

And I'm wondering how many words it's going to take before I'm done.

I made you now, I erase you now

'Can I play with madness?'
The prophet stared at his crystal ball
'Can I play with madness?'
There's no vision there at all

While the official winning validations do not begin until November 20th, for all intents and purposes, I have "won" another year of NaNoWriMo. My verified word count stands, as of half past two this afternoon, at 104,233 words.

I'm not truly considering it a win.

it can't always be
what you want it to be
it can't always be
what you want it to be

In terms of word count, I definitely made it, and more besides. By the 20th, I may have added on even more words, because this tide seems unstoppable. So many years I spent hiding, trying not to think, trying not to feel, and this project has brought everything back in spades. I do mean that literally--I'm as much grave-digging as I am perusing the past, disinterring at least the corpses of the memories of old loves if not their literal bones, from living ground.

Shout when you wanna get off the ride
Shout when you wanna get off the ride
'Cause you crossed my mind, you crossed my mind
I'm a penny in a diamond mine

At this point, having excavated what I've excavated so far, alone, some things are becoming quite clear. Beyond my basic tendency not to learn from mistakes, I'm discovering facets of my personality I did a great deal to erase, that I'm finding I want back. Will reclaiming them make my life more difficult? Probably, but they're bits of me that have left me feeling, not inaccurately, hollow, and I don't have to live that way.

More, though, the bigger questions I'm thinking over are of the nature of love itself. Or my love life, which may be a vastly different thing. I'm now looking at everyone I've fallen for in world, and doing my best--after the abandonment of time, parity, and relationship--to ask myself one simple question: If I had that relationship to do over again, knowing what I do now...would I?

so let it fly by
let's say it loves you
let it slide, slide
is that how I met you?

My answer prior to this has always been yes. Regrets, absolutely, I have them; sometimes I pile them up with old quilts and tuck myself in at night. But, case by case, would I do the same thing now?

you had a warning
you didn't want it
you can't come crawling back now

And...maybe I am learning, maybe I'm not, but I'm finding there are definitely people I would avoid, had I had foreknowledge. No indication of who, so don't ask--I've also learned by reading through the early days of the blog that either I'm obscure to the point of total mystery, or practically stamping name and location on my forehead. It's enough that I know who they are, and I would have made both our lives easier if I had just never gotten involved.

Which leaves me...well, with a great many ghosts to exorcise. Not to the point yet where I can do that, so it's starting to feel crowded in here, but I'm not afraid of my own ghosts. There's nothing the past can do to me now that it hasn't done already.

["Can I Play With Madness?" is from Iron Maiden, still good after all these years. "(It Could Be) Love" was recorded by Camouflage Nights. The third stanza was from an unreleased Phender song, Slide. The fourth is "The Warning" by Neverending White Lights.]

a mouthful of bees couldn't stop me

"If this will be
anything
then let it be
over."

There's something very curious about saved conversations. If I hold a letter, I can tell (reasonably speaking) how old it is. The feel of the paper will tell me, the look of the paper, the shade of the ink. Even the smell it holds may tell me things. All of these are possible with a physical object--a letter, a book, a scroll.

But data is different. Data is, to a certain extent, frozen in time. It's always fresh and always new for the most part. So opening up a saved conversation is much like having it again for the first time.

As a friend--relevant to the conversation, as it happens--once said, the wound bleeds anew when exposed again to the blade. And so it is with saved digital discussions.

"If this will be
anything
then let it be a
disaster."

So...why am I bringing this up? Because this year I had the bright idea to gather up all the remaining threads of an abandoned relationship, and analyze them through saved conversations. For NaNoWriMo.

Absolutely unpublishable, for a variety of reasons, but the chief one is that--at least right now--it feels like I'm digging into different parts of me, digging through skin and muscle to meat, seeking out anything that might have healed wrong, broken badly, or infected, and hoping to stop before I hit bone.

I know that's graphic, but that's really what it feels like. I already know that the pressure of editing whatever this is going to be is going to be too much for me. And at this point, I'm wondering if this was actually a good idea, that may lead to good things for me, or if it's just another way to sabotage myself under the guise of recovery.

At this point, I honestly couldn't say which it might be. Maybe it's both.

"A mouthful of bees
couldn't stop me
from whispering,
I don't know you."

So that's where I am. My brain dragged me out of bed only a few hours after I'd retired, and I ended up writing at a fever pace well into the afternoon. After starting, finally, on November 5th, I'm now at 15,841 words.

In two days. I'm not kidding.

"But if scars could sing
about the permanent things
they'd say it's damaged
but it was something."

But, I can already feel cracks in the foundation. Though maybe they're needed, this next time around. Because obviously, I didn't heal right the last time--if the years of isolation and hermitage have taught me nothing else, it's taught me that pulling back from the world was the wrong thing to do. Now, I need to figure out what the right thing to do will be. If there is one, single, "right" thing.

"If this will be anything
Then let it be over..."

I still plan to cover the Sinners' hunt. I've been given access to the Sinister Goth blog, and I'm contemplating what they need my voice for, over there. I'm working on writing more, interacting more, both on and off the screen. We'll see where all this goes.

But if anyone talks to me during this month, and I'm a little crazed around the edges...well, that's why. In case anyone wonders.

It's not too late to get involved in NaNoWriMo, if you're also feeling masochistic. There's a participation banner on the left side of the blog that links to their site. Get involved, if you wish. They eagerly accept donations--and they're a very good cause to donate to--but what they most desire is people who will write. That's all. They just want you to spend a month, and invent 50,000 words within it.

They just happened to pick November to do it in.

Good luck, whether you join in or not. Meanwhile, I'm back to excavating the past, and trying to understand why.

(The lyrics are taken from "Lament" from the group Mount Moriah. I'm finding them very interesting of late--all the musicians have backgrounds in heavier sounds, the jagged notes of punk, the heavy chrome of metal and hard rock. But when they create music together, they're drawn to American roots folk. So they turn out these lyrical pieces that are heavy on symbolism and acoustics, with an electronic edge.)