Mostly because I can't tell if they're omens or just the last annoying flickers of hope. If I had any faith at all that life would genuinely improve to where I could put my past behind me, I'd walk away from the bus stop.
My last attempt was in the wee hours Monday. I failed, entirely due to human survival instinct, and have been feeling burnt-out and too numb to try again; my pain has been bizarrely and frighteningly distant and inaccessible. Not gone, not diminished, just out of reach. As a result, and in light of how especially devastating my ctb during the Thanksgiving holiday would be for my family, I've put any further attempts to ctb on the back burner until it's more immediately imperative.
However, since putting it on the back burner:
1) My mostly-estranged father has, out of the blue, had shipped to me a piece from his art collection that I have covetted for the last 40 years, since I was a pre-teen. Of the art in my family --and in a family of artists, there's a lot!-- this would be the one piece I would take if I could choose any piece from his collection.
2) My mother has told me she is weaving for me a near-copy of my favorite of her tapestries, modified in a way that makes it shockingly relevant and dear to me. Of the art in her collection, the original of this tapestry is the one piece I would choose, and by modifying it as she has, it makes this version all the more precious.
Those two pieces of art, my favorites, are likely to arrive here at the same time, in the first week of December.
3) A magazine that rejected a story of mine last year because they were greedy snots, and didn't want to write up a professional contract that would limit their use of my writing to a fair standard, has today contacted me offering me more money and a genuine, fair contract for the same story. Magazines do not do that. Stunned, I have accepted.
Further, my sleep patterns have abruptly changed from 3-5 hours of nightmare-fraught sleep/night to an almost comatose 6-8 hours/night.
And last night I dreamt of a swallow (my favorite of all wild creatures) flying toward my house. It was autumn, now, when the swallows are supposed to be gone, but it still was pleased to be here. Swallows are significant for sailors like me, because it is swallows who protect sailors, and swallows who carry sailors' souls into the afterlife. In my dream it was flying not toward my bedroom, but toward the living room where I intend to be when I ctb. Was the swallow in my dream coming to protect me, or to carry me onward?
The last elements, more sleep and the first pleasant dream in years, could just be subconscious elements of human survival instinct undermining me. But the first three are nothing I have any control over, and they have seriously rattled me. I'm a devout atheist and a skeptic --but if I am an honest skeptic, and skeptical of the supernatural, I must also be skeptical of the absence of the supernatural.
I have no idea what to think.
Sorry if all of this is rambling, and TL;DR, but I needed to see it all written out and to fling it out to for someone else to read.
My last attempt was in the wee hours Monday. I failed, entirely due to human survival instinct, and have been feeling burnt-out and too numb to try again; my pain has been bizarrely and frighteningly distant and inaccessible. Not gone, not diminished, just out of reach. As a result, and in light of how especially devastating my ctb during the Thanksgiving holiday would be for my family, I've put any further attempts to ctb on the back burner until it's more immediately imperative.
However, since putting it on the back burner:
1) My mostly-estranged father has, out of the blue, had shipped to me a piece from his art collection that I have covetted for the last 40 years, since I was a pre-teen. Of the art in my family --and in a family of artists, there's a lot!-- this would be the one piece I would take if I could choose any piece from his collection.
2) My mother has told me she is weaving for me a near-copy of my favorite of her tapestries, modified in a way that makes it shockingly relevant and dear to me. Of the art in her collection, the original of this tapestry is the one piece I would choose, and by modifying it as she has, it makes this version all the more precious.
Those two pieces of art, my favorites, are likely to arrive here at the same time, in the first week of December.
3) A magazine that rejected a story of mine last year because they were greedy snots, and didn't want to write up a professional contract that would limit their use of my writing to a fair standard, has today contacted me offering me more money and a genuine, fair contract for the same story. Magazines do not do that. Stunned, I have accepted.
Further, my sleep patterns have abruptly changed from 3-5 hours of nightmare-fraught sleep/night to an almost comatose 6-8 hours/night.
And last night I dreamt of a swallow (my favorite of all wild creatures) flying toward my house. It was autumn, now, when the swallows are supposed to be gone, but it still was pleased to be here. Swallows are significant for sailors like me, because it is swallows who protect sailors, and swallows who carry sailors' souls into the afterlife. In my dream it was flying not toward my bedroom, but toward the living room where I intend to be when I ctb. Was the swallow in my dream coming to protect me, or to carry me onward?
The last elements, more sleep and the first pleasant dream in years, could just be subconscious elements of human survival instinct undermining me. But the first three are nothing I have any control over, and they have seriously rattled me. I'm a devout atheist and a skeptic --but if I am an honest skeptic, and skeptical of the supernatural, I must also be skeptical of the absence of the supernatural.
I have no idea what to think.
Sorry if all of this is rambling, and TL;DR, but I needed to see it all written out and to fling it out to for someone else to read.
