Losing a Whole Year, Gaining Something Else

[S]tories hold power because they convey the illusion that life has purpose and direction. Where God is absent from the lives of all but the most blessed, the writer, of all people, replaces that ordering principle. Stories make sense when so much around us is senseless, and perhaps what makes them most comforting is that, while life goes on and pain goes on, stories do us the favor of ending.
[John Hodgman]

I constantly have what I call "blog-uments" with Joe over the validity and purpose of this form of writing. The arguments don't usually involve the specificities of my blog--he doesn't read it--but are more involved with blogging in the abstract, the idea of it in general. I use the above quote often to tell him exactly why I believe that blogging is not only valid, but perfect for some things: my story, my life, my pain does not end. Anyone who has spent more than thirty seconds with me knows that there is no ordering principle in my life, and I am not able to write for myself any form of blessedness.

But I was talking to my cousin a month or two ago, and he blogs too--though he tends to blog poetry. He said he has two "finished" blogs, that it usually takes about a year and a half to bring his blog to what he considers to be a complete product. That was when I felt the first stirrings of something, though I didn't think about it much then.

I think it most hit me when Joe sent me a video of me opening my birthday present, asking for me to not post it here or anywhere. Watching the video, I knew I wouldn't have posted it anyway--there's something that is too much about us in that video: the way we banter, the toss of my head over my shoulder before I lose it, some sort of telling smile. But I felt for my friends in that moment the same way I think some bloggers think of their children, innocent bystanders implicated in my words and actions here. People who have influence on my life, important and beautiful and wonderful as it is and must be, don't get the chance to speak for themselves here. But my story is incomplete without them. Maybe they deserve a rest, a time to speak and act knowing that these actions, these words won't perpetuate themselves.

Then there is the feeling that this chapter really is done. I started blogging exactly one year ago, and in that year my story--and my blog--evolved and blossomed and grew and took on it's own beautiful life. Although the style is the same, the blog is very different now than it was then. At times it is more raw, but somehow more polished.

I used to keep a blog on LiveJournal, but I grew out of it. I like to watch how my entries have pared themselves down and shaped up, took form and gained beauty out of the mundane occurrences of my every-day existence. Somewhere along the way, I learned how to carve out details and leave those things that are already spoken. [The idea that I did, certainly, have breakfast has nothing to do with the fact that I, five minutes later, fell off of a curb. Only one of these things need be described in detail. And etcetera.]

But the end of my first year of medical school has drawn to a close, a fact that was almost painfully clear when I found that we now had a bulk email address of com-2yr. This summer has been almost boring with the consistency of both my lab and my almost-completely unwavering mind. Stories rise out of conflict, and my first year was nothing but. Now, all is still. I can hear myself breathe. This story is over.

So I decided that I would not blog for this next year. I've blogged since I was 16, and I don't know what it's like to go for a year without this option to help me process the information, the events, the everyday occurences that make me feel like letting go. I look toward it, and I wonder if I will write on paper. Maybe I'll pick up other things, use the time to start writing fiction again. Or maybe I won't do writing at all; maybe I'll pick up something else, start running or taking drives or start listening to new music.

It was a hard decision to make, especially the week of July 4th, when I had so much encouragement from the people at RealMental, the week I was stunned to find myself on Five Star Friday, the week when the first that came to my mind was "Oh shit, they like me." I've made blogging connections with some blogging high-rollers, people-who-know-people, and I would love to be a part of that world so much, and I hope that I one day am.

But even that, it seems, makes this year off more seductive. I still have a huge amount of anonymity. I know that some people do read this blog often, but it's not thousands or even hundreds again. I have luxuries that people like Heather Armstrong do not, and that is the luxury to do exactly what I'm doing.

But the truth is, I know I will come back. In one more year, I will have a different story to tell. Joey will be living with me. My first two years of medical school--and boards--will be over, and I will be starting grad school. Life will be different and new, and with that, the time will be ripe for another story to begin.

In the meantime, I'll be posting a guest post on Perks of Being Me sometime soon, and I plan to write once or twice for RealMental if they'll have me. I'll still Twittering and keeping up with everyone's blogs, and I will be looking forward to jumping back in.

When I originally dreamed up this post, I thought I would leave you with the Vonnegut reassurance that "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt."

But the truth is that everything hurt. And was beautiful nonetheless. With that, the story ends.