"Then it starts again, feel my heart flicker..."
Saucy Monky wrote those lyrics, but Rachel Roellke a year ago could have written them, too. That constant sense of dilution, light flickering on and off, the shade being lifted temporarily, then slammed back down. The flickering of my heart, my voice, my head, my life, really. Everything. From the men, to the singing, to the writing... nothing was quite satisfying, nothing was quite there. But I felt like I was tasting everything, getting glimpses and little sips of what glory is really like. Really intense, potent snippets.
He might kill me for using his name, but maybe not- Dylan is the best example. I felt so in love with him, so ready to move on those emotions, ready to commit to something that I was sure of for once. But we were far apart, so very far- and all I could have from him was the flickering. The moments of beauty, of love, and then nothing. Words of love, then, nothing. A perfect weekend visit, then, nothing. Always flickering, always fluttering, never settling.
(everyone gets quiet here. Dylan is not the best example, of course. there is a much more relevant example, but everyone is sick of hearing about him. it is no longer important for me to mention his relevance to my romantic infrastructure. we all know already.)
Now is different, you see- I'm no longer flickering. It's a different sensation. All of the beauty and love and light is inside of ME now, I am the net, I am the bowl. Now it's drag. I feel this drag to my life, as though something is holding me back, holding me down. Completion of the novel is something I really should be shooting for, because I think this drag has a lot do with that flickering- once I complete the novel, perhaps I will be over the flickering I felt for Dylan. I think I've adjusted my life to accommodate the absence of these men. But I don't think I've fully adjusted my cargo net. I need to stop catching glances of that beauty, and instead capture those same moments, freeze frame, and put them into an accessible medium. My novel.
This is the reason I moved to Washington. I moved here to write a novel. To stop the flickering. And I feel it, the flickering is dying down, becoming less of a lifestyle and more of a mood, if that makes sense. But now, this drag, the pull of loves lost and loves missed is rolling into a heap behind me, attached to my heels, stretching me to my limits. It is time to cut those- and if I have to cut my tendons to rid myself of them, so be it.
