Day: July 25, 2020

As my partner has told me in recent weeks, my writing process makes it hard for other people to be around me when I write. In truth, my ‘me’ process makes it difficult for people to be around me. While there are times where my writing process is a quiet and contemplative slag in which the only sound and motion is my fingers repeatedly striking the keys until it creates a rhythm, this is not the only way. Often I write with inspirational sounds, soothing sounds, or even TV shows cluttering the background soundscape. I draw from these things like drawing in air. Again, not always, but sometimes.

I feel like part of the move and part of the change is about changing my process and doing the writing a different way–accepting the collaborative nature of the writing and the relationship in a way I never have before. On the one hand I may be in the middle of a major spurt of writing and need to take a moment to focus on my partner and her needs. That is unfamiliar, but good and healthy and something I really want to do–and to be able to do. I get caught up in this idea of ‘got to get it down right away or it is gone’ and she has always been respectful of that. She has never hindered my process, but instead always helped and guided me as though my muse.

She is my muse. Now my muse and I share an office, and while that is going to take some getting used to for both of us, I believe it is the beginning of a beautiful journey.

Yep. A thing.

This is the day and space where I spend 10 minutes writing a story off the top off my head based on a random word I find online. Today’s word is:

Ulosis

They say that muscle gets stronger by breaking. The tissues pull and tear apart, straining under the pressure of exertion until they can no longer take it. The, broken and drained, they rest. They heal. They knit themselves back together because they have to. The muscles must be ready in the morning, because the body is going to keep moving; keep living in spite of itself. For a normal person a 3rd of your body weight is muscle. A third of yourself tears itself apart in a never-ending quest to support you; to deal with the stress and weight of simply being.

What they don’t talk about is the small percentage of you that doesn’t survive. Occasionally that stress–that weight of daily living of pushing yourself beyond that which you are accustomed to–that stepping outside of your zone tears down the toughest third of you in a way that cannot be fixed. Instead of knitting itself together another process begins. Ulosis.

It starts in the part of you that you felt was the safest–the strongest. Where the muscles tried to knit themselves back stronger the bonds can no longer grip. The muscle and skin thicken, hardening along the gossamer cord of that idea of self repair. Not ever injury can be repaired. Some leave a mark. Often it is small, barely noticiable or a sliver beneath the skin. Other times it is more. A visible thing that bears witness to your pain; your failure.

Ulosis is but the start of a scar. The formation of this new thing you carry with you. This new way of understanding and interacting with the world.