Can you forget how to write?
It's been so long since I last posted an article, or even read one, that I feel like I'm brand-new to this whole thing. This whole blogging thing.
I've been busy just living. Work. My girl. Spending money. Socializing. Staying in and renting movies. And lots of writing, even for fun, but just not online.
I'm writing a story. In fact, it's almost like re-writing a story, decades later. When I was in my early twenties I wrote almost a whole book on an old Mac computer, that slowly started falling apart. The disc drive went. The keyboard was fucked after spilling a beer on it, and the printer blew. I lost several pertinent discs that might have restored it all, if I had had the cash to get everything fixed, but I never did have the coin at the time.
It's probably sitting in the Bensfort Rd landfill, buried under a ton of broken toys, headless dolls, and computer screens with their windows to inner worlds blown out. A treasure chest inside a non-decomposing frame of metal and off-white plastic holding early writings, now long gone, irretrievable.
Would I want it back? All those random stories that spoke of unfullfilled love, bitter regret, and anger aimed at parental figures who abandoned all?
Fuck no. Who needs that kind of reminder of a life shown so distorted? My adult eye now sees things as not being all that bad. In fact, it was a fairly idyllic existence in retrospect. Forgetting the stain of being adopted out, I had two loving and supportive parents, a twin, and an older brother I both idolized and admired. I never got hit, I never saw night after night of arguments and binge drinking. There was so much badness in life that was not present while growing up, that I find it hard to believe I thought all was dark and dismal.
But that younger, more self-centred writer saw it differently.
Maybe it would be a good chuckle, if, just for kicks, I was able to read some of the stories I poured my young heart into. Maybe my naive perspective would show me how much I've grown now, and how much I've changed since then. Maybe, maybe, maybe. And then again, I'm still that same girl. With those same regrets, although muted. Those same issues regarding intimacy, desire, and disdain are still lurking, though I have tried hard to outgrow it all.
One story still stays with me. And as I rewrite it from memory, almost twelve years later, I find myself discarding a lot of things. Some of the plot is changed, and the relationships aren't nearly as corny, or already done. The ideas that I used to have about life aren't the same, and my writing reflects that now.
It's not the same story anymore. I find that interesting, though. I also find it somewhat bittersweet.