“Oh yeah, life goes on even after the thrill of livin’ is gone”
By Vickie Fernandez
(NOTE: This is Vickie’s first post from her new blog, “Little Cuts: Stories in the Present Tense”.
Once upon a time I had a blog. It was dark, brooding and completely ridiculous. I was a slave to it but for all the wrong reasons. I had a friend who was a blogger and a prolific writer to boot. I wanted to be like her and write as much as she’d write. We fought with one another and blogged about it. We fought with other people and blogged about it. We hated, loved, ate, danced, drank and blogged about it. It was out of control! I exploited my thoughts and feelings on a daily basis and revealed myself under the guise of fifty-cent words and half-truths. It was like a hang over that had to be constantly feed to fend off nausea.
The friendship died and the blog went with it. I don’t know which I miss more. Sure, there was a great deal of dysfunction between the person who inspired me and I but the one thing she always encouraged me to do was write. I think that my reluctance towards writing had a great deal to do with her absence. I associated blogging, journaling and even writing essays and fiction with that part of my life.
There are other reasons why I stopped writing. I had nothing left to say. The fire had been snuffed and the desire to be noticed and praised had wilted. I changed everything: my geographical location, my hair and my habits. I convinced myself that I was not interesting enough without the catalysts I believed made me a good writer: drama, drugs, alcohol and self-loathing. I broke up with New York City as well as with that insatiable need to be a sought after party girl. The transition from chaos to peace was painless but the need to write clawed at my insides like a jaguar in captivity.
This is not going to be a forum for every infinitesimal or sordid detail of my life. I am not sure what the theme or purpose of this little corner of the Internet, with my name on it will represent. Like life the journey not the destination is what counts. I may write every day or not. I have wasted too much time worrying about who lurks in the darkness of this mass high way of communication. I feared that old friends would stumble upon my words and laugh at my ill use of commas and newfound confidence. It’s silly, really. But that’s how I felt. What kind of life is that? Not my life anymore, that’s what! I know I have a gift and I’m not going to tuck it into a journal or a folder titled “Things I will Someday Publish” on my desktop.
So visit me if you’d like. Mock me all you want. Write me nasty, anonymous emails until the cows come home. I am not hiding anymore. I am going to be the best writer I can be and the only way for me to achieve this is to write.
Vicckie Fernandez is a recovering New Yorker living in Philadelphia. She believes in resurrecting the most debasing, humiliating, yet colorful morsels of her life in an effort to excavate a greater truth and more importantly to entertain the masses.
One of THE BEST blog entries I have read in a l-o-n-g time…why? Because this is EXACTLY how I feel! I left MSN Spaces because I felt so pressured to come up with something clever every day! And when I would not post an entry for a while, people would ask…why no entry or where ya been? Yikes! Get a life people! I chose to start a blog as therapy for myself and ended up needing more therapy because of the blog! What the heck is wrong with THAT picture…sheesh! 😉 Anyway…I wish we had the option of leaving Vicckie a comment cuz she really hit home with me! Keep blogging Vicc! And thank you Kathy for posting this and for Inspirational Fridays!
I used to write my feelings with a pencil and erase them so nobody could unveil my spirit. Not anymore. Thanks to a blog, I can be, write and let it out of my soul “with no regrets”…This has been the best therapy for me, going through a divorce and redefining myself, and accepting the realities and vulnerabilities of us humans. “Writing is freedom”.