All or nothing at all

There was a time when I thought I wasn't capable of loving again... Or at all... Even for a moment more.

Every time I would sit down to write a love story it turned into the death of a soul... A beautiful, elegant soul.
I felt sorry for the character because all she or he would ever know was that they lost their sweet innocence because of me.  They lost their wonder because I didn't have wonder to give them.  That they lost their joy because I had lost mine.

Then I fell in love again... I believed him.  I believed that this love story was the one that wouldn't end in sadness, carnage, a breaking that was unrecoverable... And, even though he broke me and to be fair, I broke him as well.  For the first time: the remnants of that real true love have followed me.  It has guided me in a way that my characters without souls will find them... Or even in some cases the deeper part of how one can lose the ability to feel love again quickly... With the the loss.

One must understand that some people: they can continue to feel the ability to love even when shattered. And some, like me, they will continue to glue the shattered pieces together hoping that if they are very careful they won't crush the peice they are holding into dust. Praying to a God they dont believe in that they can pull parts of the lost heart from deep down and share it with another... However, more often then not, we come off cold, lost, broken, and unable to communicate the real parts of their souls because the fear is so strong that love is a distant memory. 

For my characters I am sorry.  This time... If I fail at the ability to love properly... I hope you can forgive me and my ability to write a truly heartbreaking tale of love and how it fails you in the most beautiful and real way possible.

Clinically Anxious - Anxious mind of Jacque Maire

So, I have always struggled with my anxiety.  I was diagnosed as "clinically anxious" at the ripe old age of twelve. It was one of the things in my life I've just had to live with... just part of my personality and either I was going to be loved or hated by people.  I was okay with that because I live in a "black and white" world, shades of grey really kind of confuse me.  Not in the: "I don't comprehend how people do what they do" rather the: "I don't get WHY they do what they do and how they can justify their actions without even blinking an eyelash."  I'm all or nothing and an underlying level of uncertainty has always been my anxious twitch. 

To be clinically anxious doesn't mean I am any of the following: crazy,  emotionless, incapable of understanding emotions of any kind, lack of voice of reason due to an overwhelming fear, or over rationalization.  It simply means that my mind goes a million miles a minute, I have about 16 plans for any situation, I like and need my patterns like we need water to drink or food to live.  It means that my way of doing things is what makes sense to me and everything else makes me weary... however, it doesn't mean that I am against trying something new... I just do it with my feet ready to take flight at anytime.  It means that surprises are frightening to me and I don't like them... they aren't part of a plan that I have formed and therefore I don't know how to deal with the first initial moment.  It means that to make changes of any kind in the way I think, live, or function will more than likely cause an internal panic attack that I don't know how to voice and cause me to shrink back into my hermit shell and watch the world go by from the wall.  I have lived my life this way for a very long time and it's word for the most part is a law to me.
 

Mainly my anxiety is under control. I can live and function like everyone else... I am just very uncertain of the world around me.  I am very unsure of people and their actions, even more so their words.  I am almost always left behind because people don't know how do deal with my inability to empathize, moreover understand which feeling is which.  I am unsure of everyone... everything.  I haven't ever really had someone tell me that they were going to stay in my life and mean it.  They thought they meant it at the time... they thought they loved me, all of me... every anxious, OCD, critical hair on my head.  But, whenever things got tough... or Jacque had her up days where; she felt like she could conquer the world, followed immediately by her down days where; she couldn't trust anyone... not even herself.  These are the times when people really decide if they are going to stick in someone with my mental strife's life.  They started questioning everything they thought they knew they loved. They leave. 

I am always upfront with who I am.  I don't hide these things about me... they are part of what makes me fundamentally Jacque.  I call them the Jacque days... These are times when they are challenged by my constant need to be going, talking, understanding, planning... they are pushed to breaking points with me because they don't comprehend how I can go from thought to thought, action to action, place to place and keep track of it all.  They are challenged and they are quick to judge rather than see that this is a constant song playing in my head.  Sometimes I cry and I don't know why... it can be number of things for me but mainly, it's that I have become so inside my head that I have unwittingly alienated myself from the world and then realize that even I need human interaction from time to time.   However; by the time I have realized this I have become starved and needy.  With all of these things said... I still have been known to put my whole self out for a certain select few people and I have been let down over and over again.  I have to say that it is very hard for me to do this without the fear of being left behind yet again.  That is way I keep my circle of people very small... the people I have in my life are very important to me because outside of my family they have never left me.

I would like to point out a few things about my condition. 
1) To have anxiety does not mean in anyway parenthood can't be achieved.  There are methods and ways that you can learn to keep your anxiety under control.  It's not impossible.
2) Friendships are more often than not short lived and not without consequences that leave an anxious person in their heads searching for ways they can remedy the loss.  THIS is where I find myself.  I have lost so much in my life, relationships even acquaintances that could have been really great friends if they had just taken the time to see past my infinite circle of worry, uncertainty, and realization that there is only person capable of seeing your flaws for actual beauty ... you.
3) Anxiousness actually helps with my writing.  It makes me see the stories about people they don't know they have.

As I sit and analyze my anxiety I noticed that things that people don't understand about me... are what make me like my short stories, poems, essays, even my novel.  My whole life I have always loved books... I pretty much always had my nose stuck in one and when it wasn't, I sure as hell wanted it to be. My books gave me perspective on the world at a very young age... the perspective was this: No one was without several short stories that make up their lives, some of them they knew and some of they had no idea were being made.  I loved looking at people from my corner and watch.  It made me feel safe to know that while I was quiet as a mouse no one saw me and I could see them... the stories started at a young age.

So suffice to say after all of that...
I don't feel my anxiety of the world is a burden for me... it's a story... you are all stories in my head, my eyes, and my heart.

Why am I so afraid?

There is something strangely humbling about knowing satisfying your urges sometimes just aren't possible all of time.  That could be any urge; the need for chocolate, to write an epic novel that will make you millions, sex, a career you can be proud of.  With me, it seems to be that lately writing is touch and go.  It's an urge I just can't seem to fulfill.  It's that insatiable itch I can't scratch.  A lot of times I sit down to write and there I am.... Pen poised to paper and.... Nothing.  Witch is beyond frustrating when you had verbiage not more than twenty minutes beforehand.  Or, here is one.  When your world is perfect so nothing comes out.   I can sit and make a thousand more excuses but, the truth of the matter is this:  I've lost it.  

I wish I wasn't so capable of just stopping the things I start. Well, with my passions at least.  If it's the normal everyday, life as I know it.  I can keep going.  I want to say that I am a workaholic and it's true I am.  Also, James is right, I am afraid of success.  I'm downright fearful that this book will be great and I'll see a wonderful turn out and then find... The next one will be terrible.  

I love to write.  It's like music.  I need it to function.... Yet, here I am sitting here blogging about my fear while the characters are just wondering around in my head begging to come to life even more than they already have.  

When I am not writing, not only am I letting myself down, I am letting my characters down as well.  Without me they will never know what it's like to be seen from the eyes of another.  Their world will never be fantasized about.  Their stories will never be told.  

I am being selfish with this fear.  What do I have to lose by writing a novel? Oh nothing but the last of my dignity of i fail.  What do I have to gain?  A better life for my family.  A family that I worship and completely adore.  

I wish I could say,  I'll sit down and write everyday.  Maybe I will.  What I can say is, I think it's time for me to stop being afraid and start doing my job.  

The Last Time I Was Here

The last time I was here I was telling you that my friends in my head were talking to me again.  It's true they are.  However, I have let life get the best of me and I forgot my passion once again.  Don't get me wrong, being a mom is the most fulfilling thing that I could have ever asked for!!!  I love teaching him how to do things and right from wrong.  Yet, it's not the completetion I need in my life. I need to be writing the stories in my head. Mostly for me, but also for my son.  For him to see that mommy did what she was meant to do in life.

I have said several times that I fear that I am not good enough.  How will I know I am not good enough until I finish what I start.  I have not finished what I have started with these novels ever.  A lot of time I wonder if I am good enough and then deem myself not and go about my life.  Then I get reminders that I may have a good story and that I should keep going.

My boyfriend is my biggest fan and lately he has lost his faith that this story will ever be finished. Today that made me beyond sad to know that I was letting him down.  I wasn't fulfilling my passions. I wasn't sharing with the world what I could do. It actually hit me to my core.  With that being said there are three people that I don't want to hurt anymore.  My son, My boyfriend, and Myself.

Below is something I wrote that will be placed in the story.  I just wanted to share with you where my head is at...

Sometimes the world seems too simple.  Time moves slowly and everything makes sense.  Other times, you’re left wondering if you’ve made the right choices.  If your heart is capable of one more heart break.  One more wave of unexplainable tears. 

You sit in your corner and watch the world just pass you by.  Ever changing.  Ever listening.  Ever watching.  The people you love becoming faded memories in your once perfect dreams.  You think about all the tears you shed for the lost lives of your world.  You think of all the sadness you feel for the Tom, Sevens, and Marys you will never get to know. 

You think of these people, your friends and your family, and you weep for them.  You weep for the time you will never get back.  The joys you will never experience.  The friendships you never got to see grow.  While you’re thinking of them, you remember that these people were never really your friends.  They were servants meant only to do your bidding.  That you never really knew them at all.  Still you weep for them.  Still you feel their pain as they die.  One by one.  Fading into the darkness, into the abyss you longed for but have never known.

I am you.  I look at you in the mirror and I see the weight of the world just resting on your shoulders.  A weight you didn’t know you had borne until just recently.  You carried it so strong.  So noble.  As gracefully as you were always taught to do.  I am you.  You are me.  In our body we have grown so strong, wrought with a power that could crush this world in just one thought, with just one motion.  A blink of an eye if you will.  You are always so strong, yet these days you feel so weak.  You feel so lost.  So very much alone.  You love your world, your people, the one or two friends you may have.  Yet, you know it’s all for not.  It’s forever going to be your burden to save them from that tyrant of a man. 

As I look at you, you look so sad.  So lost behind your tears and your fake smile.  A smile that used to light up a room but now just sits on your face, frozen in that way that makes it look real but, you know that if your move your lips in just the right way it will crack and you will break.  You of the strong will and mind, are so fragile.  I look at you in the mirror and I see a girl I do not know.  I see a woman surviving with a strength she didn’t know she had.  I see… a faded shadow of your mother. 

I have cried so much in these last couple of days.  I have cried for the greatest loss my heart has ever known.  I have cried for a people that I will never talk to or cherish in a way that I should.  I have cried for being weak.  For knowing that if I stay here I will never be a parent.  I will never laugh with my child, because my father will kill it before it even takes its first tiny breathe.  I will never know the things that I should that would make me a great queen, because my father doesn’t want a great queen.  He wants a broken soul.  A lost shadow that blends and longs to fade into the world.  Why does he want these things?  Because, then his precious fate ridden prophecy will not come to be. 

As I continue to stare at you, I realize that you are the wielder of your own destiny.  You can control no one, save yourself.  Save yourself.  It’s so simple now that I see it.  What I wouldn’t long to give to do just that one thing.  To save myself would be quite the feat indeed.  Don’t you want to know what it’s like to feel the sand beneath your feet, the wind in your hair without restriction, the sun shining on your pale, pale skin?  I nod to you in the mirror.  Yes, yes I would like to know these things, feel these things.  Yes I would like to be free of these burdens, these chains that tie me down.  These restrictions to my heart, my power, and to my mind.  I would like to know what it’s like to walk freely down a street and know there is not a single creature behind me that is there to take me home.

Home.  One says it like it’s a good thing.  We know that is not the case at all.  We know this because our home is riddled with pain and sorrow, with jealousy and blind hatred.  This may not be the world’s home, but this is your home.  I look at myself and realize that the only savior I have is me.  “It’s you” I say to myself.  “You go out into the world and make your own home.  You don’t need magic to survive.  All you will ever need is you.”

I wipe away the tears from my cheek.  I am right.  I must leave this world before it eats me alive and leaves me every which way but whole.  I must leave while I have the chance.  All I need to do is walk out those castle doors and into my destiny.  Not the one deemed for me by the fates; but the one I will create for myself.  I don’t need these walls to hold me.  All I need is my own beating heart.  All I will ever need is me. 

I wish my mother were there to see how I have grown.  I wish she were here to see me walk out those doors never to return.  Oh the things she would say.  The looks she would have.  The warm, gentle smile she would give as she helped me with my bags.  I wish my mother knew all the things I have learned from just wishing she were here.  I wish she could see the way I would weep for our people, and love my father even after he had completely lost his mind.  I wish she could know, it’s because of her… I have held my power at all.

Sometimes you look at your life and wonder what it was all for.  You think that you have 

everything figured out.  You think that you have fought your battles and that every battle will be the one getting you closer to your goals, your dreams, and your destiny.  In reality is that the case?  I’ve spent many years loving my people, my family, and my world and not getting one step close to whatever my density was or is or will be.  The reason being is that I haven’t ever been given the time to breathe, to just stop and smell whatever flower comes into my view.

You spend your whole life trying to be something you are not.  I have learned that crying is bad, loving is worse, and strength is all you need to survive.  In my world you had one task at hand in your everyday life.  You survived court while living under a tyrants rule, waiting for your world to come crashing down. 

I have never been in love.  I have never felt the hand of another in a gentle and loving manner.  I have always wondered what my life would be like if I wasn’t a princess.  I have always wondered if I hadn’t been born to Adroziel, would I still be a fairy?  Would I still have power?  I have spent countless nights just sitting in my chambers dreading my day, willing my power down, begging my heart to feel something other than sadness and loneliness.  My only friend was and is my childhood companion and handmaiden.  Even my sister refused to be my friend.  Why was it that she hated me so much? 

I didn’t know the answer to this question, I didn’t know any of the answers to many of my questions.  It was like I was here waiting for my world to come crashing down and I knew that it had already fallen. 

Sitting here in my room, I knew two things:  the first being that it was time to make a change in my life.  My people would live without me.  My father would live without me.  My sister would live without me.  I needed to leave.  The second: I had to follow my heart.  My heart said leave, run quickly and as fast as you can.  So I packed my bags, and hardened my heart even more.   So here I sit, waiting for the world to end.

I wasn’t sure when this would happen. My leaving.  I just knew that I packed my life away.  At this moment, I missed my mother.  She made life make sense.  She was always so cool, calm, and collected.  My mother, was the most wonderful Fae to grace our lands.

The characters... are not speaking to me

When the characters in my novels don't speak to me I feel so lost.
It's like losing a part of you and looking for a way to bring it back.

When I am sad they leave, they don't want to sit in an unimaginative brain.
Or maybe they don't want to sit and listen to me argue with myself in a constant tug of war with my thoughts.  I am always fighting with thinking too much.   Maybe they don't want to talk to me because I am always fighting them... with excuses not to write.

"I can't write today, I have too much to do"... cop out I hear them say.  If you wanted to write about us, you would just do it.

"Life is just getting in the way"... screw you.  Life isn't getting in the way, you are getting in your own way.

"Iv'e gone months without writing before, everything will be fine"... you're a liar... you live for the spoken word and here you are refusing us to be heard.

Then they leave, they are gone as quickly as they were there.  I don't realize how much I miss them until I can't hear what they have to say.  Particular scenes go unwritten for months.  Character sheets are incomplete.  Beginnings, middles, and ends are not completed.  All because I refuse to listen to the voices in my head.

With that said... how do I get them to come back?  How do I get them to understand that I am not trying to neglect them?  How do I get them to understand that I love them and I miss them terribly?

Voices in my head come back! I want to write your story now!

Excerpt:

Lately, I haven't had the will to write.  I have been told I was a good writer.  But, you know what they say... you are your own worst critic.  I have two very important people in my life... they tell me to keep going,  So, the other day I had the urge to write a scene.  Here it is:

Sometimes the world seems too simple.  Time moves slowly and everything makes sense.  Other times, you’re left wondering if you’ve made the right choices.  If your heart is capable of one more heart break.  One more wave of unexplainable tears. 

You sit in your corner and watch the world just pass you by.  Ever changing.  Ever listening.  Ever watching.  The people you love becoming faded memories in your once perfect dreams.  You think about all the tears you shed for the lost lives of your world.  You think of all the sadness you feel for the Tom, Sevens, and Marys you will never get to know. 

You think of these people, your friends and your family, and you weep for them.  You weep for the time you will never get back.  The joys you will never experience.  The friendships you never got to see grow.  While you’re thinking of them, you remember that these people were never really your friends.  They were servants meant only to do your bidding.  That you never really knew them at all.  Still you weep for them.  Still you feel their pain as they die.  One by one.  Fading into the darkness, into the abyss you longed for but have never known.

I am you.  I look at you in the mirror and I see the weight of the world just resting on your shoulders.  A weight you didn’t know you had borne until just recently.  You carried it so strong.  So noble.  As gracefully as you were always taught to do.  I am you.  You are me.  In our body we have grown so strong, wrought with a power that could crush this world in just one thought, with just one motion.  A blink of an eye if you will.  You are always so strong, yet these days you feel so weak.  You feel so lost.  So very much alone.  You love your world, your people, the one or two friends you may have.  Yet, you know it’s all for not.  It’s forever going to be your burden to save them from that tyrant of a man. 

As I look at you, you look so sad.  So lost behind your tears and your fake smile.  A smile that used to light up a room but now just sits on your face, frozen in that way that makes it look real but, you know that if your move your lips in just the right way it will crack and you will break.  You of the strong will and mind, are so fragile.  I look at you in the mirror and I see a girl I do not know.  I see a woman surviving with a strength she didn’t know she had.  I see… a faded shadow of your mother. 

I have cried so much in these last couple of days.  I have cried for the greatest loss my heart has ever known.  I have cried for a people that I will never talk to or cherish in a way that I should.  I have cried for being weak.  For knowing that if I stay here I will never be a parent.  I will never laugh with my child, because my father will kill it before it even takes its first tiny breathe.  I will never know the things that I should that would make me a great queen, because my father doesn’t want a great queen.  He wants a broken soul.  A lost shadow that blends and longs to fade into the world.  Why does he want these things?  Because, then his precious fate ridden prophecy will not come to be. 

As I continue to stare at you, I realize that you are the wielder of your own destiny.  You can control no one, save yourself.  Save yourself.  It’s so simple now that I see it.  What I wouldn’t long to give to do just that one thing.  To save myself would be quite the feat indeed.  Don’t you want to know what it’s like to feel the sand beneath your feet, the wind in your hair without restriction, the sun shining on your pale, pale skin?  I nod to you in the mirror.  Yes, yes I would like to know these things, feel these things.  Yes I would like to be free of these burdens, these chains that tie me down.  These restrictions to my heart, my power, and to my mind.  I would like to know what it’s like to walk freely down a street and know there is not a single creature behind me that is there to take me home.

Home.  One says it like it’s a good thing.  We know that is not the case at all.  We know this because our home is riddled with pain and sorrow, with jealousy and blind hatred.  This may not be the world’s home, but this is your home.  I look at myself and realize that the only savior I have is me.  “It’s you” I say to myself.  “You go out into the world and make your own home.  You don’t need magic to survive.  All you will ever need is you.”

I wipe away the tears from my cheek.  I am right.  I must leave this world before it eats me alive and leaves me every which way but whole.  I must leave while I have the chance.  All I need to do is walk out those castle doors and into my destiny.  Not the one deemed for me by the fates; but the one I will create for myself.  I don’t need these walls to hold me.  All I need is my own beating heart.  All I will ever need is me. 

I wish my mother were there to see how I have grown.  I wish she were here to see me walk out those doors never to return.  Oh the things she would say.  The looks she would have.  The warm, gentle smile she would give as she helped me with my bags.  I wish my mother knew all the things I have learned from just wishing she were here.  I wish she could see the way I would weep for our people, and love my father even after he had completely lost his mind.  I wish she could know, it’s because of her… I have held my power at all.

Sometimes you look at your life and wonder what it was all for.  You think that you have everything figured out.  You think that you have fought your battles and that every battle will be the one getting you closer to your goals, your dreams, and your destiny.  In reality is that the case?  I’ve spent many years loving my people, my family, and my world and not getting one step close to whatever my density was or is or will be.  The reason being is that I haven’t ever been given the time to breathe, to just stop and smell whatever flower comes into my view.

You spend your whole life trying to be something you are not.  I have learned that crying is bad, loving is worse, and strength is all you need to survive.  In my world you had one task at hand in your everyday life.  You survived court while living under a tyrants rule, waiting for your world to come crashing down. 

I have never been in love.  I have never felt the hand of another in a gentle and loving manner.  I have always wondered what my life would be like if I wasn’t a princess.  I have always wondered if I hadn’t been born to Adroziel, would I still be a fairy?  Would I still have power?  I have spent countless nights just sitting in my chambers dreading my day, willing my power down, begging my heart to feel something other than sadness and loneliness.  My only friend was and is my childhood companion and handmaiden.  Even my sister refused to be my friend.  Why was it that she hated me so much? 

I didn’t know the answer to this question, I didn’t know any of the answers to many of my questions.  It was like I was here waiting for my world to come crashing down and I knew that it had already fallen. 
I wasn’t sure when this would happen. My leaving.  I just knew that I packed my life away.  At this moment, I missed my mother.  She made life make sense.  She was always so cool, calm, and collected.  My mother, was the most wonderful Fae to grace our lands.

Sitting here in my room, I knew two things:  the first being that it was time to make a change in my life.  My people would live without me.  My father would live without me.  My sister would live without me.  I needed to leave.  The second: I had to follow my heart.  My heart said leave, run quickly and as fast as you can.  So I packed my bags, and hardened my heart even more.   So here I sit, waiting for the world to end.

Jacque Marie Fincher © 2015

Writer's Block

Have you ever just couldn't write?
I have been having this problem a lot lately.
I literally just sat in front of my book and looked at the screen and had nothing to say.

My characters used to speak to me.  They used to whisper in my ear and live in my head.  These days, it feels like they are run away from me.   Why would they do that?  Why would they leave?

Maybe it's because I am stressed out.  Maybe it's because I have lost them. 

I have never been one to say I couldn't write.
Lately I feel as if I am not able to tell their story.

Maybe there isn't a story. 
Maybe I am just imagining that I have something to say.

I feel broken and that they will never return to me.

If any of you have suggestions, please send them my way.
I would love to finish my story... I would love to share with the world my words.
I would love for you all to see my world.  Yet, my world doesn't want to be seen.