Deconstructing Memories

I reflect a lot on where I have come from, past experiences, friends, relationships, family, the time I accidentally threw out the most epic story I wrote in year 3. I was convinced it was going to be a best seller, it was about this off the wall family that moves house and you get to follow along on all the ensuing hilarity. I thought it was awesome. I once sent a story I wrote about toothpaste that makes this kid invisible to a children's book publisher. I got a knock back. I was 11 years old and a bit devastated. I loved writing stories as a kid, my teachers thought I was quite a good writer and most encouraged my creative writing. So a dream to become an author was seeded inside a young girls mind. I would live in an apartment and get a cat, and write fantasy, adventure and a tad bit humorous novels. Kind of like Kathleen Turner's character Joan Wilder in the movie Romancing the Stone (one of my most favourite films by the way), except I wouldn't write romance novels. And I definitely had no expectation of my own Jack T Colton whisking in to rescue me from certain doom and sail off into the sunset. I always had a singular view that it would be me and my cat and writing stories. Building worlds and characters in my mind and constructing them into stories that maybe people would like to read. And that would be my life. That is not my life. And that enthusiastic child writer in me is a bit sad and disappointed. But if we all got to be what we wanted when we were kids there would probably be loads more astronauts I guess. I haven't written a story in a long time. I have a few paragraphs of a story I started writing a few years ago on my laptop, but I kind of didn't know where I wanted to take the main character and what direction to take the story. The premise is that her partner abruptly leaves, ends the relationship with very little warning and explanation. She frequently visits this park bench they use to sit at that overlooks a lake. And as the story continues on, her relationship and connection with the lake becomes more apparent and significant. But I don't know where to take it. I have had writers procrastination for years about this story. One day I might actually finish it. Or maybe it will just be a few paragraphs on my laptop forever. Current life circumstances make it challenging to sit with your own thoughts about life, let alone constructing a fictional one out of thin air. All the while I am deconstructing my own life, and my own brain. And currently that is kind of important. Analysing and gathering data on my breakdown is useful and helps me locate patterns that may trigger an episode, and in essence how I can avoid one. In the process of all this deconstruction there has been plenty of reflection on my life. Recently an old friend contacted me out of the blue and it was good for my soul to just reconnect with someone who knew me when I was only me. Life is so much about me being a mother and my sense of self has drowned amongst the nappies, neverending grocery shopping, school drop offs and pick ups and everything inbetween. Yet it is interesting how you can kind of naturally fall back into conversation with someone you haven't seen or spoken to in years. In my former years as a teenage misfit, I had a reasonable amount of friends, but there are always those few people who you can genuinely connect with. It is an almost intangible feeling, difficult to describe. It is like something in your soul recognises and resonates with those few people and it just makes you feel at home to be amongst them. I still feel that way about a few of my childhood and teenage friends. When you go right through school with a bunch of people and spend so much time with them, you sort of develop this character reference catalogue of people, the good, the bad and the ugly as it were. And if you're fortunate enough you will find the ones that resonate and connect with you. They are your people. I miss so many of them. Sadly none are a part of my everyday life, or monthly or yearly life. It has been 20 years since I have seen some of them. Some are a part of my Facebook life, but it is a limited platform to experience and genuinely interact with people. Your brain just fires differently when you actually talk and engage physically with people. Perhaps my old friends are not the same people, I am certainly not the same young girl I once was. Now hurtling towards middle age, with a broken mind and body and a hectic life. I am definitely not the carefree and perhaps careless person I once was. But I would like to think I would be able to pick up where I left off with those great friends, despite the years and the people they may be today. I have very few people I have met as an adult that I feel that resonance with. And I don't see some of them near as much as I would like. Constructing more opportunities to genuinely connect with people is something to work towards, it will help my mental health. Yet the insecurities always creep in and tell me "Why would anyone want to bother with a basket case like you? You're too much hard work and neurotic and weird"
I can't argue with that though. I am still searching for some of the lost marbles to put in my mind box. Donations of surplus marbles accepted, as long as they're washed first. I don't want your marble germs. In the meantime I will be climbing trees in my mind and searching for some peace.