I’ve been wanting to write a book about trauma for years, but the work involved seems so massive I can’t get started. The more time that passes, the more I seem to be trying to convince myself there’s nothing there, but I can’t stop thinking about it… and feeling stuck and empty and lost about it…and bringing it up in casual conversation—a constant reminder that I’m standing still.   

The likely reason for putting it off is that I’m terrified—because I know the first step might kill me. I know the only way to begin a book about the traumas in my life is to dig out all the little thoughts I’ve hidden away on sticky notes and folded napkins and partially filled notebooks. It’s the collecting up of all the treasures from all the random moments that inspired me to write a few words here and there.

It’s like there are pieces of me, floating around everywhere. They’re hiding in boxes and crates. They’re crumpled and stashed behind layers of drywall and tucked beneath the loose bricks covering my many self-built walls. They’re well-versed in whispers, reaching out to me from the corners of rooms I’ve entered. Flitting about like butterflies crossing busy intersections.

It’s like if I could just stop fucking distracting myself and get to searching, I’d find them all. I could pile them up in my narrowing field of vision and they’d all be in one place for the first time ever. Then and only then, I might begin to pull from them everything I often feel slipping away.

So many morsels of evidence—out of sight but front of mind. I think about them off and on through every doldrum-filled day and achingly quiet night. Simply the thought that they exist, that I coaxed them out of me once and sang them effortlessly into so many pages of so many journals…it overwhelms me more than anything ever will.

And I know it’s going to take some elbow grease one day, to excavate all those dingy little gems from my past and compile them into something useful.

If only simply knowing they exist were enough to whip them out of their hidey holes and pull them into me…like a collapsing star becoming one with itself again—before exploding out into a supernova of brilliant color and light.

So many little thoughts and inspirations…so many napkins and notebooks…so little time to bring them home and share them…

But then again, maybe I’m over complicating things…