close to heart

I want to take today's opportunity to talk about chance.

Yes, folks, that's right, you heard it right here on the Rambling Mexiwegian Network. Today we're going to be talking about the debate on chance. Can it be controlled or is it out of our control?

Let's think about it while I talk about some other things. Yeah. Just put it on the back burner, there, k? 

Wait.

Waaaiiit...

Waaaaiiiitt... an-nd..

Done.

Okay.

I tricked you.

Because I'm stalling. The previous 76 words (not including this paragraph and considering I counted the contractions as a single word, in addition to the "k" at the end of the third "paragraph") have nothing to do with what I'm really wanting to blog out today. Those 76 took longer to write than it did to read them because they're not even related to what I'm wanting to focus on. Usually, that is the case with writing, hey? It takes longer to do than to read. 

Well. Duh. But this time I mean exceptionally so because I am stalling.

I am stalling because I know exactly what I want to write about today, but I don't know if I can muster up the finger muscle to commit the words to the air, into time and space, into the universe.

I am stalling because I am aware that I have used writing in the past in negative ways, and I'm not just talking about rambly, incoherent, or emotional blog entries, but in letters to people. I'm talking about the contemplating of how I, in the past, could use my smarts to put people in their place--or--at least state MY position because x, y, or z person had to know what that was. Sometimes with reason, sometimes less so, many time jumping the gun, and at least almost always having to get that "one little dig" in, no matter the commencing tone. 

I wonder if other writers have done this. I wonder if other writers have tarnished relationships with people because of this mode of expression. I would bet not. I would bet that no one has the effed up capacity I do to actually go through with using words as a weapon of class destruction.

Let me amend that. Had. Had that capacity. As in, once upon a time. As in "il etait un fois..."

Okay, okay, let's not bullshit ourselves entirely, here. I still have that capacity, but I'm too tired for it. I am ashamed of it. And it totally negates where my heart and mind truly are at. Today my words and emails have taken on an entirely difference personality overhaul, but they're not quite there yet. 

I would like to stand up, like an addict or a cancer survivor might do, and say I have been 6 months sober/clean/in remission, but I can't. I can't. My writing has gotten me in trouble as recently as.... well, as recently as a year ago. (That's if I consider I stand by what I've said in communications since then.) (And I do, minus one name.) And, as any addict/survivor could say, the thought never really leaves you, it's just how you decide to deal with it.

To be honest, I've gotten less-than-praiseworthy feedback in even shorter time than that, but there does come a point in one's life where she knows for herself that she doesn't have to apologize for shit.

Which is quite the difference from before.

I guess I have just been using this little thing of gray matter between my ears called the brain a little differently, a little more, a lot more, and I know that all the shit I was trying to communicate before needed a better and steady outlet, not an emotionally-hopped-up one. Really, though I am still reeling with disgust, regret, contempt, and fatigue at this particular summary area of my actions, and all of the energy it took to be that... vindictive and overly apologetic at the same time. 

After a while, a person like that either goes down in flames, exploding in a hot, bi-polar mess of anger and regret or they be cool, like me, and just drop it, stick the hands in the pocket and move on.

I kid.

The price I have paid to learn this lesson is far too dear.