The Final Gift from A Good Friend · 4:17am Sep 10th, 2021

There was a time ago where I was talking to a pal about a passing interest in poetry. I was known at the time for being prolific. You focus more on creation than the quality of said creation. You do your best. You try to compose as well as you can within a limited time frame and, usually, on the first pass of a story.

This was not my usual way of working and, were it not for a friend and an idol, I probably would not have taken to that path of writing. I've always wondered things like that. For instance. I drink my coffee black. Why? Because I wanted to be like Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks.

I'm someone without a strong sense of self: and is lacking in personality. So I stole aspects from others and emulated every fictional character that enthralled me. With the Dale Cooper thing, at first, I didn't like drinking coffee black but, in wanting to be like my non-existent hero, convinced myself to like it.

After a while, it stuck, and I've taken it as black as a moonless midnight.

But my question is how such things stick. Did I force myself to like black coffee? Was the innate like of black coffee always there? Would I, without the desire to be a reference, come to like black coffee—even after the first few terrible cups?

Solace has come with the following answer.

You cannot force yourself to uphold a matter not meant for you. We are tired and lazy people. The desire to be like something or someone only lasts for so long and, once it does, the matters you endeavoured in come to cease as well.

I've haven't seen Twin Peaks in nearly a decade, and I've forgotten the character of Dale Cooper. But I drink black coffee because I enjoy it. Just the same. I used to slouch back in the day, with my thumb pressed to my lip, emulating L from Death Note. Suffice to say, I stopped that long ago, as it was not meant for me.

What this complex (or not) opening is trying to illustrate is that you cannot force yourself to become something you are not, however, in honest exploration, you will find yourself in other things. Dale Cooper caused me to try drinking black coffee.

Something that I was destined to enjoy.

The above can be read as cringe and, without a doubt, at the time it was. This is not the normal way normal people find themselves. But, then again, I was never meant to be normal. I would emulate fictional characters, and in so doing, I would discover something that stuck, something that was really me, which went on to build this person of collected pieces.

We all posses unknown talents and desires and tastes and, though hints in our lives may lead us to them, we cannot be fully sure we will find them all by the time our time is up. Isaac Asimov discovered he had a talent for speaking off the cuff only by doing a few lectures. He might have had the impression from the reactions of others when he spoke and other such things.

But he only became sure when he would walk onto a stage with no prepared words.

That's why you should allow yourself to be swept by maybe silly things.

Most don't try black coffee because they're trying to emulate a character, but because it's something to try, or because it was offered to them, or perhaps the benefits of getting the needed caffeine without the added sugar.

That's why, as odd as it was, I don't regret my character emulation days.

Why such an opening? Because before I met Skirts and AiDs on this time, I would outline and write and edit a story, spending months on only a couple of chapters, and never being happy with what I had.

I could never imagine myself writing a story in only one draft. In having it be good enough on the first go that you could release it as is. Skirts rose higher in the sky in being able to write so well in the first session. AiDs was the same. Both of them, however, inspired me that I could do—somewhat—the same.

Once I had that faith or permission, I started writing and releasing stories, not caring if they were good, only that I did my best, learned and improved as much as I could. I found that when you no longer have to write well that you can write more.

If you have to write and get it right... you'll be stunted.

But if you're writing to simply explore and enjoy the idea, well then, it's no different from reading. There's no required skill in reading a good story. Writing without the thought of skill allows for full enjoyment.

(I wonder. If you tasked a writer with writing twenty stories, ten with the mindset of getting it right, the other ten with the mental of enjoying it, which, overall, would produce better stories? There's a balance... but I lean toward the latter.)

Quantity produces quality. Rewriting your first story over and over isn't beneficial. You do not have the practice and experience to improve such content. But after writing a hundred stories, however, you'll find you can improve that first story a lot better.

So I would write a lot of stories, at least until I became good, and then I would return to the act of doing three drafts. As you can expect in all the flaws, wrong words, spelling and grammar mistakes, I never returned to that way ever again. I simply edit too slow, and do not enjoy the process.

(Though I have been doing bits of it lately on stories I would like to stand a bit better.)

And now we reach the follow-up to the first sentence of this blog. I had a passing interest in poetry, but my pal remarked that it was everything that I wasn't. The fixating on every word, the assortment of syllables, and everything minuet.

He was correct. That wasn't much like me.

So I abandoned the idea for a time.

And then I came to learn a Truth about Soul Sister.

For seven months after Soul Sister had died, I always kept her in my mind, what she would or wouldn't have liked. In writing, I would say the water was green, but then her voice would appear, saying that it was a bubbling swamp. I wrote about her, in stories and blogs, so I could make her alive, from the passive to the act, even for a moment.

There's not much you can do with the dead.

But just letting them go doesn't feel right.

It was an unhealthy mindset to have, though I needed to go through it, at least, to better understand what I know now. It was only a month ago that I came to learn a truth about Soul Sister that knocked all that I knew into question. No matter what, regardless of what I learned, I would accept and love who she was.

But I'm human. Even though I had no hesitation in announcing that I still loved her, still, I carried my doubts. You can say and strive toward the noble thing. But truly feeling it, being it, is another story. I am not a good person. I try to do good when I can. But I cannot have that consistent character.

I like to talk shit, and say things that I shouldn't.

So I went after myself for a few days.

That my love and pain for her, which had been strong throughout the year, wasn't unconditional. That I was terrible and ignorant. I couldn't force myself toward the good, the right way of feeling about this. Even if I could, it wouldn't be true good.

So I let it rest, and swirl inside of me.

I had talked to a few people about it and, though they helped me process the shock of the revelation, I still did not find the resolution I was looking for. There are some matters you must do yourself. You have to talk to yourself, process it yourself, to a certain depth possible only with yourself.

But in all my journal entries about it, I came no closer to an answer. I thought about writing a story... but I did not have the willpower, and did not want to go through so much in a time of crisis. I was dead at my desk with a burden only a broken me could fully deal with.

For whatever reason, without knowing what I was doing as I moved, I took out a pad, a pen, and started to write. There was a bud of tension and swirling emotion within. In scribbling ink to page, the following words came to be.

Left in Mystery

By Your History

Yet My love
Never Lost Its Sincerity

It was then that I found peace. That I slumped back in my seat as all that I had been through had found its end in those little words. I felt clear and cleaned, finally sure of myself in what I felt for her. It was a few days after that where Soul Sister left my mind. She always there, my perception of her, kept alive by active thought.

But now she vanished.

It felt wrong to let her go. To be at ease and at peace without her on my mind. Matters and burdens I would take to her, now, I composed in poetry. Thoughts. Feelings. Ideas and ideals. A lot within a little.

It was wrong to burden her—and others—with so much.

But in coming to compose poetry, however, I was able process and compress all that bullshit. I was able to establish all that was going on within and, so doing, calmed it. It was friends like Ferret and Barbarity that offered me the courage to keep on with these poems.

And I have not stopped since the day of that first entry.

For seven months, I tried to keep Soul Sister alive with active feeling and thought, but that did not benefit her at all, and was not a healthy way to be. After learning the truth and composing that first poem, I was able to find peace and let her go.

With the guilt that cropped up, I soon wrote a poem about that, which was how the dead aren't meant to be kept alive in our heads, but instead, are supposed to be visited like an old friend. A few weeks after that poem, without force, Soul Sister floated back into my mind, and relished her company, before she floated back on out.

And I think that's the way it's meant to be.

I was never meant to write poems. And my previous pal was right in some respect. I do not have what it takes to composes good poems. The stuff of meter and metaphor. I'm too abstract most of the time.

But that's not why I write poems. I do so because there is something inside that I want to express; a story and a blog would be too long. There is simply too much inside me. I took to learning Spanish on top of learning to play the flute to occupy the time. Poetry was the perfect medium to capture the elements of my day to day.

Usually they would pass without further proof of their existence.

But in being able to write what I experience into poems, they feel more legitimate, and I a lot more stable for them. I've never had to force myself to write a poem, and until the day I'm empty, I doubt I ever will.

This brings us to the thesis of this blog.

Acting like fictional characters allowed me to become who I am now. The advice and acceptance of fellow writers allowed me the confidence to be the writer that I am now. And my Soul Sister, who helped me with my strife, left me with a medium to process it.

On the day that I let her go, she left me a gift, and I've been better for it ever since.

This blog has been pretty up my own ass. I'm sorry for that. But the above is simply the truth that I feel. It's more so thanks to the people that I've encountered that have opened up these paths for me to walk. My big sister, MaskedFerret, caused me to feel cared for when I thought such a thing impossible.

And Barbarity, my pal in the shadows, has taught, encouraged, and kept me on the path of Haikus. Were it not for them composing so many, and letting me know that I could do the same, I doubt I would have ever taken to the format.

So thank you, my friends, and all the rest that read these words.

And to you as well, Soul Sister. I don't talk directly to you, anymore. But I still think about you from time to time. The first part of the recovery process was letting you rest. The second part, the one I was unaware of until it happened, was finding rest for myself.

Thank you, in my final act with you, of helping me find it.

I Laid You to Peace

Before Finding Your Present

Gift of Poetry

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