2005-12-21 - 8:40 AM

i know i can be overwhelming ... all the thoughts running around in my head. i'm a writer after all and my brain overflows with words spilling over into endless poems,stories,letters. like a faucet that can't be shut off. in the past i used to just bottle it all up never letting anything out except a poem once in a great while. since ive opened up the gateway and torn down the dam sometimes its hard to control the water that spills forth. in a poem i once wrote that i felt like Ripley in aliens.. driving that broken rig all the axils screaming, my hands gripping the wheel, pedal down hard, driving into the dark full force..a voice in the back of my head saying ease back .. ease back...and i can't always hear that voice. and often if i do hear it.. i ignore it. ..it sounds too much like my father saying shut up...

i think that comes from so many long,long years of repression. holding things inside suffering in silence. my father telling me when i was about five to shut up..that children are to be seen and not heard. and then for years after that hardly speaking at all unless i was spoken to first. that followed me all through most of my life.struggling to be able to speak or share my thoughts... then i found poetry and art. i began to draw and write poems. i found my true love but i was told it wasn't practical .. told i should not pursue such nonsense.. so i wrote in secret and floundered on what to do with my life for many years to follow. my father had also wanted to write but was emotionally forced into engineering. i think he thought he was doing me the same favor pointing me into the more sensible future.

i didn't find my path again until i began writing my journal and novel in the late 90's. when i opened that door again. it started pouring out like a river and the more i write the more it pours. and a funny thing has happened .. my father has begun to write too.. i think when i took this last brave step into my own voice.. he was brave enough to follow his voice too.

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