Writer's Block: My endless love

Quite the question...

And I'm not sure how best to answer it.

I don't tend to fall in love with people. I believe that I only think I do. I'm not sure if that's sad or not. I think I fall in love with the idea of people - the idea of being with them, them being with me. It's not love, I don't think. I think it's obsession...I crave everything about a person (a person I'm with, let's say). I need desperately to know everything about them, everything about who and what and how they are. I need to know why they act the way they do on almost a molecular level. I need to know everything there is to know - all of their secrets, all of their truths and lies. It's so desperate that I almost invade them...I know I get too close, too deep. And then it's all over as quickly as it began...Sometimes upon waking, I've had enough. And I know it's cruel - I really do - but it's better for everyone if it ends and we move on. It's that need to be almost inside of their skin...Very strange. Sometimes dangerous, too...People don't like (as I've learned) having their buttons pressed when they can't press yours.

I do like people, though, in general. And especially creative people - I like to watch them and listen to them, to learn from them and understand what they feel when they create.

But I do fall in love with ideas and songs, art and places, an activity....Though judging by the previous paragraph, perhaps that's obsession too. I do things until I'm fatally bored with them...I can write and rewrite something over and over until I'm out of paper (I've taken to writing on a desktop once or twice, such is this need), but once the drive is out of me, so is the desire to see something finished...Which can be an impediment. I've visited particular places every weekend for months and months because I need something from it...I need the vibe, or the be in those particular surrounds, but once it's over, I'm out of there, you know? There are places that I've had that connection with and then never gone back to them.

If I do feel that deep love...Not passion, not a bright blaze, but something far deeper...Then I feel it for writing, not that I've been doing a whole lot of that lately. I adore feeling that pen in my hand and hearing the scratching on paper and seeing the ink form letters and then words. I love knowing that in some near insignificant way, my thoughts - mundane as they might be - are solid and have a chance at outliving me. I believe that recording one's thoughts and feelings, one's base ideas and fantasies, is human...It's the most human thing in the world, just making oneself known. I love being able to write an environment - everything from the colours in the sky to the grain in the wood of the chair upon which my character sits - and I love getting people to fall into it, helplessly. I like writing a character who is every bit as real as we all are...Without saying any more than you need to, you can introduce your reader to your character and they will know exactly who he is - they'll see the wave in his hair and that dimple in his cheek. They know what his starsign is by the way he acts and they'll know what his favourite food is and the way he holds himself when he walks...That's what I love...

So there are things I do love, genuinely, though they're not people...I love Van Gogh's Starry Starry Night. I love the song Childhood by Michael Jackson. I love Bryce Courtenay's The Power of One and Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. I love (don't laugh) the dictionary as a piece of work. I love Autumn days when the sky is clear, the air is cool and it's windy. I love thrillers and comedies. I love stand-up comedy to bits. I love jokes, but I can't tell them properly. I love dusk. I love fantasy. I love Disney and other cartoons. 

As for how it's shaped my life?

Well, my relationships with people are certainly affected by my...Not inability to love, lol, I just haven't met the force who can put up with me (how awful is that?!)...People are either really open with me, believing that I can never know them better than they know themselves, or people are super guarded with me to protect themselves, stop me from getting too close (which I understand completely). People don't always trust me, which doesn't really bother me. Some people - people I actually know - believe (and have told me) that I don't care about anyone but myself because of this whole thing...Which I'm beginning to believe is valid. I take too much and try hard never to give anything up. I wonder why that is...

I don't think the writing has shaped my life, I think it's helped me to control it. I started journalling back in *counts* 2003 or so, I think because it helped me to keep negative thoughts and feelings I had at the time (due to what I later learned was dysthymia which was to turn into a huge breakdown) out of my head and safely on paper where I could analyse them and understand them. On second thoughts, maybe it has helped to shape me...Made me more rational and logical because I've been forced to go back after the panic attack or whatever is over, and see my own thoughts to try and work through them. I've been told that I think of things differently and see the world differently because of the writing...That I can turn plain things into something artful because of the more creative way my brain works...I don't know about that, though, lol...I can't compare it with anything else, I've never lived in anyone else's head.

I wonder what that says about me, that I love things more than I do people...Not that I don't feel close to some people, or that I can't form relationships, because I do...Hm.

Anyway, flist, answer this question too...I'm interested to know what you all think :)

P.S. I'm sorry this was rambly...The question just grabbed me.