Some days my heart aches

Not all days. Not even most days.

But there are days when my heart aches.

 I was 22 when my heart got shattered into bits and pieces.

Nothing can prepare you for the pain. To say it hurts would be an understatement.

It feels like your chest is ripped apart, your heart removed, and all that is left is a gaping hole.

You gasp for breath. You try to hold on to everything you can. You scream. You ache. You cry until you fall asleep, exhausted.

You lose 10 pounds, because you’ve lost your appetite. You didn't even notice until your friends and family point it out to you. Who knew heartache could be such an effective diet?

You’re afraid to go to sleep, because you fear those few seconds when you wake up and you’re still somewhere between awake and asleep. You know you'll lose your bearing and forget the cruel reality. You'll think he’s there, lying next to you. You'll roll over to snuggle up against him, like you used to and find his side of the bed empty. The pain hits you all over again. He’s not there. He won’t ever be there again.

You’re as miserable as you’ve ever been.

You decide that anything is better than feeling this way. That it can’t continue. That you can’t go on living like this.
So you bottle up all the hurt and all the misery and put it in the place that used to hold your heart.

As time passes you are able to fool the people around you. “I’m okay,” you say. “It was hard, but my life is better this way.”

You smile trough the pain, because that is what you’re supposed to do.

Some days you are even able to fool yourself into believing that you really are okay.

But when you’re alone with your thoughts, when you lie at night and try to fall asleep, you know that something is off. You try to breathe slowly, to calm yourself. But each breath you take makes it obvious that something is truly and utterly wrong. Something in your chest is heavy. The weight turns even the simple task of breathing into an excruciatingly painful ordeal. It feels like your heart has been replaced by icy cold stone, laced with barbwire.

You’ve effectively turned your heart into stone by bottling up all the pain. But what choice did you have? If you hadn’t done it, you wouldn’t have survived.

You do the only logical thing you can, and continue to ignore your pain. You shift around and try to find a comfortable position for your heart. You breathe lightly. You avoid thoughts and feeling that trigger the hurt. You ignore the elephant in the room.

But the elephant can’t be ignored forever. She will come crashing into your thoughts and feeling with her nauseatingly big trunk. Each time you sit and cry and cradle your head in your hands. You wonder why you haven’t gotten better yet.

Why isn’t this over? Haven’t you suffered enough?

No one has the answer.

You content yourself to focus on your breathing. One breath at a time.

Inhale. Exhale.

Breathing is just a rhythm.

Inhale. Exhale.

Some days my heart aches. Those days get fewer and farther between. It helps to write about it.

One day I suppose the elephant will have turned into a puppy-sized elephant, with the evolutionary advantage of being adorable. Instead of making me sad, she will curl up beside me and snuggle up against me. I'll scratch her between her ears, name her Nora and marvel at how cute she is.

This idea makes me smile.

Do ingredients make the cake? No. They don't.

I love music. Couldn’t live without it. Okay, maybe I could, but I really don’t want to.

Lately I’ve listened to Mad World on repeat and I thought I’d share it with you.

This song has evolved quite a bit. Here is the original:



This is the Gary Jules version:


The two versions are completely different, even though the cords and lyrics are the same. Click here for the version I’m currently listening to. It's got a more rythmic feel.

Mad World by Gary Jules was in the movie Donnie Darko*.  I love both the movie and the song and they are both intrinsically linked in my mind.

Each of these versions has their own appeal. I’m predisposed to the Gary Jules version, because I heard that one first. But the different versions just go to show that even though the ingredients are exactly the same, the result can be very different.

This is also why I try not to worry about whether or not my story is original or not. It doesn’t matter. Chances are that every story that could be told has been told, in some form or another. But just because a version of my story exists out there, doesn’t mean that I’m wasting my time.

Some might worry that they never have ideas for stories. But really. It’s not the idea that makes the story. It’s not even the characters or the plot. All that is just the ingredients.

What makes the story, are the words you choose to put down on paper. It’s the way you tell the story.

So I'm going to go now and put some more words down on paper.



* If you haven’t seen the movie, you should. Really. I can’t tell you too much about what the movie is about, as it would ruin the experience for you, but trust me it’s good. It’s dark, twisted and hopeful at the same time.

6 years

I was having an evening out with a friend from high school I haven’t seen in a long time. We were talking about how it’s been almost 6 years since we graduated. Time does fly sometimes, doesn’t it?

And then we looked ahead. In 6 years time, we’ll both be 30. And where will we be then? What do we wish to have accomplished by then?

My friend wants to travel through Australia and get on with her studies. She’s already a trained nurse, but she wants more. She needs to utilize more of her abilities. Saving lives isn’t enough for her. I personally think she might end up playing a part in revolutionizing the health-care system in Denmark.

And me? I want to explore the great US of A. I’m thinking a road trip – at least 3 months – spent driving down every road I find interesting, and probably a few that will bore me to tears. I plan on getting lost and finding something in return (no I don’t know what, but I’m sure it will be profound [yes I'm naive that way]).

 Picture of Aaron Paul.

Because someday I really do want to be in a car with him and a big bag of money. 

The road trip is just a matter of having enough cash saved up. It’s the easy part.

What I need to accomplish in these 6 years that might actually take some effort from me, is to keep writing and working on getting my stories published.  I want to have sent manuscripts of into the world. I want to share my stories.

Road tripping and writing. Sounds like a solid plan, right?

It takes a crane ...

... to build a crane. All those tall buildings weren’t just put up over night. It wasn’t easy to build them. It wasn’t even possible to do so, without first creating a support system.

Of course, once the product is finished, you don’t see all the things you had to do to make it possible. You only see the result. You imagine that it must have gone from thought, to idea, to product in straight forward, logical progression.

That’s how stuff gets made, right?

I mean, who’d go through all the trouble of building a crane, to build a crane, to build a building. That just seems silly.

Riiight.

Sometimes, writing a story is like building a crane, to build a crane, to build a piece of story that I'm not even sure is going to be used.

Yes. It’s silly. Sometimes it even seems like a downright waste of time.

But today I’m happy just building my cranes. One crane at a time.

Because it takes two floors to make a story and I really want to build this story. And I happen to like cranes.

It's raining in Copenhagen today

And for some reason this song has kept on popping into my head:



Raindrops falling on my head, but that doesn't mean that I am dead...

Indeed.

Confession

Sometimes I don’t want to write. Sometimes I’d rather do anything else in the world.

There. I said it. And you know what? It’s perfectly okay for me to feel that way. It really is. (yeah, can you tell that I’m not only trying to convince you but myself as well?)

I read blogs. I like them. You can see on my blog-roll that I mostly read blogs by fellow writers. I frequently hop from blog to blog, looking for new like-minded people.

But in reading these blogs, I’ve stumbled across a certain kind of writer that I am ambivalent towards.

I’m talking about the happy(!) writer. The writer who writes because she simply loves it and couldn’t be able to stop, even if she tried. The writer who writes because she needs to. Because there is no other option.

To put it bluntly, something about this kind of writer really irks me. Being an intelligent human being, I know that my dislike is rooted in envy. The way they’re wired makes me feel like I’m inadequate.

I see their happy comments about how they breathe words and fart plot-twist and I think to myself that there must be something wrong with me. Because sometimes? Sometimes I don’t like to write. Sometimes I don’t want to open the word-doc and face another blank page. Sometimes I just want to curl up with a good book and forget the world around me. Hell, I’d even do the dishes. Anything to escape that word document.

And then this nagging feeling creeps up on me, telling me that I should be writing. That if I were a True Writer, I would spend every waking moment writing, because I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. That if I were a True Writer, I would love it. All the time.

Sometimes I force myself to sit down and write anyway, regardless of how I feel. But sometimes I don’t.

It’s ridiculous, but if I have an evening to myself, and I don’t spend it writing, I feel guilty. I’ll feel like I’m not a True Writer.

It shouldn’t be that way. I should be allowed to have a day off, once in a while.

So this is me, saying that sometimes it’s okay not to want to write. It’s okay to take a day of. It’s okay to spend an evening relaxing and doing nothing in particular.

I give myself permission to have an evening off. To not be bothered by my conscience. To not feel like I’m inadequate.

This evening? I don’t want to write on my WIP, and that really is okay.

The eye of the storm

Do you guys know how hard it is to stay positive when there’s so much world-suck?

It’s the end of a new month and heads are yet again rolling at the place where I work. Which would be fine if could just close my eyes and pretend it isn’t happening. But I can’t because I’m the person who changes their employment status in our systems. I read their resignation letters and check if they have any special compensation that should be effectuated. I file their personnel-file under terminated employees.

I feel like I’m in the center of a tornado, at the very eye of the storm. As long as I don’t move, then everything around me is nothing but a beautifully chaotic kaleidoscope. But if I even for a second forget that I can’t control the storm or where it takes me, I risk being pulled out of the peaceful suspension I’m in and thrust into the swirling madness.

  

Photo credits  

I’m letting go, enjoying the ride and feeling thankful for the stunning view. Because what else can I do? Besides. It really is beautiful.