Day 147,

I don’t don't think I’ll be making it back to the house today either.  Going to be visiting Pat earlier in the day and paying back the basket weaver with a telling in the evening.  I realize it’s probably not the best idea to be doing two telling sessions in one day like that, but eh.  The one with Pat will be casual.  

Taking a bit of time to write things down and clear my head in time for this evening.  Not going into as much detail as I might like since I do have a bit of a time constraint at the moment.

In retrospect, I probably should have expected that meeting with Pat would leave me thrown through a loop.  He tends to make a habit of that.

I actually ran into him at the market forum where I’d gone to let Cass know when and where to meet up if she wanted to come along in an apprentice capacity to the telling this evening.  I wound up helping him carry his groceries back to his place.  We took care of the usual conversational pleasantries during the walk.  The elder prepared tea (“a little something to soothe the throat” he said) while I put things away where he told me to.  As we settled into what was becoming our usual seats I asked what story it was he planned to request.

The Merchant and the Blacksmith’s Daughter.

I was caught by surprise, although in hindsight it’s exactly the sort of request that Pat would make.

He claimed he had been busy preparing his own ceremonial speech and had missed out on most of my telling at the equinox festival.

I told him he hadn’t missed much.  Really not my best performance.

He’d heard it was received quite well.

It was kind of him to say that, but the story itself wasn’t very good.

Good or not, he’d not heard it before, and novelty in and of itself is a rare treat at his age.

If it was novelty he was looking for, I knew of other, better stories that weren’t anywhere in the archives and hadn’t ever been spoken within the Village.

The old man cut to the core of the matter.  Why was I avoiding that story?

I stumbled through a multitude of half-formed and oft-contradictory, even self-contradictory answers.  Hemming, hawing, stuttering, pausing, correcting myself, trailing off mid-sentence.  It must have been half a dozen times I began to get into how I’d frozen up on stage, given a terrible performance, had a panic attack, and spent the night hiding it and insisting to my friends that nothing was wrong, but I’m not sure I ever actually got far enough in to fully articulate any of those points.

All the while, I found myself breathing faster.  Throat tightening.  Looking anywhere in the room except directly at Pat.  Feeling that frustrated sensation of wanting to break into tears but being physically unable to.  Wondering why he doesn’t say anything about the state I’ve worked myself into.  Isn’t it obvious something is wrong?  That I know what I want to ought to need to say but for some reason simply cannot.  Straining to utter something simple and obviously the right and easy course of action and coming out feeling physically exhausted and futilely defeated as if I’d been trying to scale a slick wall with no handholds.  Thoughts derailed from my objective into a loop of criticising myself for my inability.  My weakness.  My laziness.  My excuses for not saying the thing.

Of course it’s not obvious.  Hiding it is a reflex and my usual patterns of speech are off standard enough to make this look not too different from normal.

Close my eyes.

Deep breath.

Raise my hand.  A preemptive cutting off of inquiries to my wellbeing.

“Sorry.  Give me a moment.  Thinking.”

Quiet.

Not calm.

But a state closer to it.

One last fleeting thought on why I can’t cross the threshold to tears despite feeling like I ought to under such strain.

Another breath.

Another, faster.

Stop.

Rip off the bandage.

I told him that I think I made that story up.  Not in this life, but my old one.  I told myself I was “remembering more details” as I was preparing, when in fact I was newly adding them for the first time.  And really, I knew it even then, I just didn’t want to admit it.  Admit that I liked it because it was mine and not because it was good.  I don’t remember much of what I was before, but I know one thing I was not was a writer.  I never even wrote that story down before coming here.  It was just a fancy taking up space in my head.  A narrative extemporaneously woven and applied to a concert whose music I recall practically nothing of.  Never even mentioned to close friends (I think I had those).  Trying to tell it here was nothing more than an act of hubris.  Selfishness.  I wish to think of myself as creative, but I’m not capable of creating something good or worthwhile and that’s reflective of my own value.  And speaking the story aloud in a moment of self-delusion was flaunting the proof of that to the world.

And yes, I realize that is all nonsense.  No one is ever simply good at anything, especially creative arts.  Even discounting the fact that I’m probably (almost definitely) being harder on myself than is necessary or accurate, things take practice and work to make good.  And just because it felt like you put a whole lot of work and effort and passion into something, that doesn’t mean it was enough.  Or it was an adequate amount, but you’re still new so any early work is going to be rough.  That the apparent failure is something to learn from and grow moving forward.

But, you see, that’s the worst part.  The self-awareness.  The fact that I can recognize all those things and still not be able to recover and drag myself out of the emotional hole.  That I let it drive me to not want to even speak of it again.  That is the real proof of my weakness.  My laziness.  My cowardice.  My unworthiness.

I asked Pat if that’s what he wanted to hear today.  If that was why he requested that particular story.  Either he asked in earnest for the original reason he said, in which case, honest mistake, or else he dug intentionally, doubtless hoping to help me work through my issues but choosing a cruel way of doing it.

I immediately stopped myself and apologized.  I had made myself bitter.  It wasn’t right to take my frustrations with my own shortcomings out on him.

I told him he didn’t have to answer that last, loaded question.

He asked if I wanted him to.

Not really.  I wanted to keep believing he was kind.  If he told me he hadn’t meant to dig this up from the start I wouldn’t believe him and then he’d be a liar in my mind too.  There was no right answer he could give and in my current state I wouldn’t believe anything good even if I rationally recognized it as true.  I said as much.

And then added before he could respond that I recognized this was me unhealthily avoiding things again, but to please, let me have this one.  At least until I’d calmed down.

He nodded, his usual smile absent, and asked if I’d like another cup of tea.

I forced a semblance of my own smile and thanked him for the offer but declined, citing other obligations today I needed to take care of.

Speaking of, I let myself get carried away again.  I’m going to be late.

I was late, but not so late as for anyone to seem to care.  I’m back now.  It’s late, and late enough for me to very much care.  Going to bed.