Reading over what I've written while de-identifying it to post here gave me a sickening rush. I avoid reading my own writing. It usually turns out to not be as good as I thought it was when I was writing it. I feel differently about the things I've been writing lately.
I don't understand it, really. I have, maybe to an extent I was not fully aware of, a reputation for being "the crazy one". Once it became clear what was happening, it seemed like everybody's first question was "Is Xiphoid OK?"
And people seem to be... surprised at what they find when they check up on me. I'm shaking, I'm terrified... and I feel like I've been spitting straight fire. The stuff I've felt for so long but been afraid to say, the terror I haven't wanted to invoke, I'm putting it all out there and people are _thanking_ me for it. Telling me how brave I am. Me, a scared full-grown man.
I'm doing what I'm doing because it makes me less afraid. Because writing feels normal in a way nothing else does.
It doesn't give me peace. I long for peace, for that sense of inner calm and centeredness in the world, but it's always been elusive for me. Something I feel for a moment before it passes. I never seem to reach a state of true equilibrium, no matter how much cheesy new-age music and soft rock I listen to.
That knot in my gut, I just keep pushing, pushing to the center of it. I'm not there yet, but I can feel better what it is. I'm not going to push through and find the eye of the hurricane. I'm not going to find peace at the center. I'm going to find a molten core.
That's what's at the heart of our world. Hurricanes, no matter how terrifying they are to us, they skim over the surface. The center of our world is heat and liquefying pressure.
So I keep writing, I keep doing things that people call me "brave" for doing, and I'm very glad of it.
