Getting my mojo back
If you will excuse the shameless theft of dialogue from Austin Powers oh never mind- I will just say it. I lost my mojo.
I wrote endlessly as a teen. I wrote poetry, stories, yearbook and school newspaper articles. I even won awards! I was named one of Oklahoma's Top 25 Young Writers in 1987. Yeah, that was a few hundred years ago and I'm still hanging onto it like I had discovered the Holy Grail. Still, when your other greatest achievement is producing nice looking babies you hang on to whatever is close at hand.
So, you're wondering, when did she lose her mojo? Well, that makes two of us. I'm not sure exactly when it left me. Perhaps it was during my failure to attend college on a regular basis because I was plagued by severe panic attacks. I managed to get through Comp I with a "B", but I could have done better and I knew it. Somehow the anxiety numbed the brain cells too.
There were 2 very important women in my life in my late teens and early twenties. My grandmother will always be my greatest hero. She achieved more in the face adversity than most of us could ever hope to.
My aunt was the other person whom I was closest to. She and I were alike in many ways and she probably knew me as well as anyone during that time. Then one day in April 1992 she was gone. In a heartbeat, what can only be called a case of gross medical incompetence pulled her from my world and along with her she took my grandmother. Unable to cope with the loss of her eldest child her condition weakened and 3 months later she, too, was gone from my life.
Looking back on it now I can't believe that I didn't deal with that intense pain by writing through it. I was 23 though and I chose to deal with the pain in other ways which were questionable at best. I probably spent a little too much time drinking margaritas and dancing the night away, but I was alone. At least it felt that way.
My friends had all drifted off to parts unknown and begun their own lives. I lived alone, ate alone and cried alone. I desperately needed to replace the love that I had lost from my aunt and grandma and even that which went with my friends most of whom I had known since I was 6. I looked for love in the eyes of every date I had, but I know now that I never found it. At least I never found what I was really looking for.
There is no replacement for the love of another person. No two people will ever love you the same way. My grandmother was not demonstrative or gushy. She just was. You knew you were loved. My aunt was cynical and sarcastic and she loved fiercely with a protectiveness you could not help but appreciate. No man, woman or child could love in exactly the same way those women did.
So for at least 17 years my mojo has been on hold. It's been gone, but not forgotten. I had thought that it was gone forever, but now I'm not so sure. Sitting at a computer and typing my words out is certainly a different experience than writing every feeling out on paper. Maybe I just got too lazy to write longhand?
Today I feel as if my eyes are finally open again and my words are flowing again. My mojo is on it's way back.
I wrote endlessly as a teen. I wrote poetry, stories, yearbook and school newspaper articles. I even won awards! I was named one of Oklahoma's Top 25 Young Writers in 1987. Yeah, that was a few hundred years ago and I'm still hanging onto it like I had discovered the Holy Grail. Still, when your other greatest achievement is producing nice looking babies you hang on to whatever is close at hand.
So, you're wondering, when did she lose her mojo? Well, that makes two of us. I'm not sure exactly when it left me. Perhaps it was during my failure to attend college on a regular basis because I was plagued by severe panic attacks. I managed to get through Comp I with a "B", but I could have done better and I knew it. Somehow the anxiety numbed the brain cells too.
There were 2 very important women in my life in my late teens and early twenties. My grandmother will always be my greatest hero. She achieved more in the face adversity than most of us could ever hope to.
My aunt was the other person whom I was closest to. She and I were alike in many ways and she probably knew me as well as anyone during that time. Then one day in April 1992 she was gone. In a heartbeat, what can only be called a case of gross medical incompetence pulled her from my world and along with her she took my grandmother. Unable to cope with the loss of her eldest child her condition weakened and 3 months later she, too, was gone from my life.
Looking back on it now I can't believe that I didn't deal with that intense pain by writing through it. I was 23 though and I chose to deal with the pain in other ways which were questionable at best. I probably spent a little too much time drinking margaritas and dancing the night away, but I was alone. At least it felt that way.
My friends had all drifted off to parts unknown and begun their own lives. I lived alone, ate alone and cried alone. I desperately needed to replace the love that I had lost from my aunt and grandma and even that which went with my friends most of whom I had known since I was 6. I looked for love in the eyes of every date I had, but I know now that I never found it. At least I never found what I was really looking for.
There is no replacement for the love of another person. No two people will ever love you the same way. My grandmother was not demonstrative or gushy. She just was. You knew you were loved. My aunt was cynical and sarcastic and she loved fiercely with a protectiveness you could not help but appreciate. No man, woman or child could love in exactly the same way those women did.
So for at least 17 years my mojo has been on hold. It's been gone, but not forgotten. I had thought that it was gone forever, but now I'm not so sure. Sitting at a computer and typing my words out is certainly a different experience than writing every feeling out on paper. Maybe I just got too lazy to write longhand?
Today I feel as if my eyes are finally open again and my words are flowing again. My mojo is on it's way back.
posted by Becky/Skein Gang at
7:39 PM
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