Tears at a birth

 *via Pigs Fly Ranch (ironically I might add)

I'm sitting cross-legged on the floor, listening to music full blast.  My siamese fighting fish is fluttering in his fish bowl staring at me curiously.  A candle is burning.  An unfinished piece of chocolate cake is sitting on the coffee table.  If it was good chocolate cake I would have eaten it all.  An unfinished glass of pinot grigio sits next to it.

I just finished watching Leap Year.  A middling romantic comedy.  At least Matthew Goode was good in it.

My husband is out of town for the weekend. Which is why I sit around eating chocolate cake and drinking wine and watching middling romantic comedies.

And I'm feeling very emotional.  Close to tears.  But they are not bad tears.  They are the kind of tears you have at a birth - intensity tears.  And they've been building all week.  Catching me by surprise.

It started when I decided to put a few pages of the beginning of my story in an envelope and mail it to a friend.  And since then my emotions have been breaking out all over the place.

I have signed up for a writer's conference.  And I'm so excited.  And I'm so scared.  And I'm so excited that I'm still doing it in spite of the fact that I'm scared.

Tonight I bought three more books on writing at Barnes and Noble on an impulse.

I am excited - I am moving forward.  I am doing this. I am writing.  I am becoming a writer. I am afraid - Will I ever be a published writer? Will I suck? I have no idea how all this works. I am writing like a fiend - and my emotions are intense.

These tears have been sneaking up on me all week.

******

Written 10 days ago.  I am now feeling more stable.  And why was I feeling so emotional? Because a newborn dream is exciting and yet fragile. Because sometimes a birth only comes out of a death.

What has died? Pre-conceived notions of my future and where it might lead, images of motherhood and americana and apple pie, as vintage stork and baby ornaments mutely testify.

Dreams woven from childhood are hard to kill.  They'll probably rise from the dead - the vampires that won't leave me alone - they go away for awhile and then come back again.

But saying goodbye to one thing, hopefully means saying hello to another.