pleasefindthis's Blog: Written On The Side Of The Page , page 23

The Years Slip Through Our Fingers

I wanted to say, "I am sorry if we haven't spoken in a while," but we had not spoken in a while, and you cannot say such a thing to someone you haven't spoken to in a while.

I Wrote This For You And Only You: Page 18

The New Book Is Out At The End Of Feb

Here's one of my favourite entries.

The Cutting Edge Of A Paintbrush

If someone tells you that pain is an art, don't let them turn your heart into a masterpiece.

Somewhere, A Clock Is Ticking

Dear You, 
Please forgive my absence. We've been working quite diligently on the new I Wrote This For You And Only You book. If you didn't know, it's a follow up to our original book, I Wrote This For You. The first book has the best entries from 2007-2011, this new book is the same, from 2011-2015. 
It looks great and contains beautiful full colour photography and, I believe, 200 entries in total. 
It's always very strange to go through a collection like this because it forces me to look at what was happening during that time of my life. While I've always said that I don't want to turn this into an 'emotional reality tv show', because that wouldn't be fair to the people who are close to me, there's always a part of me that comes through. 
I keep a notebook and a big, epic google document which is where I write ideas for things and the start of things, and I slowly put parts of myself into that as I go about my day, sentences that stick in my head and so on, then Jon sends me a picture, and I say, "Well, of course, that picture was meant for this." 
That's not always true, sometimes Jon sends me a picture and it suggests the words. It's all always been chaotic and organic.    
But when it's all put together, when it's collected, I can always see something, a shape , like the poems are all pixels in a bigger picture. 
That's when my father died. That's when my wife's mother died. That's when we got married. That's when I was on top of the world. That's when I was below it. That's something else. That's nothing else. And so on. 
I know you'll see something else when you look at it, and I'm glad for that. I've never wanted to beat somebody over the head with a piece of writing and go, "Understand me! This is about this!" because once you've written something down, you no longer own it. The person who reads it owns it and they, hopefully, will own something different to what you wrote, the things that fill in the space between the valleys and the peaks of the words on the page. 
This is when your child got sick. This is when your grandfather died. This is when you fell in love. This is when you fell apart. This is when you were somewhere else. 
Whatever you find, and whatever you own, I hope that the act of finding it makes you feel less alone. 
Being found, has always made me feel less alone. 
I can never thank you enough for that. 
- pleasefindthis/Me  __
P.S. 
I'm also desperately trying to finish a book that I've owed someone for quite a while, called "How To Be Happy." 
To be honest, I don't even know if I know what it's about anymore. I had this idea that because I've dealt with depression quite a bit in my life, that maybe I could write a book about dealing with it, but the book has ended up being something else. I keep writing it, deleting it, writing it, deleting it and I rinse and repeat. Anyway, the clock is ticking on that and it's getting pretty serious. I am way, way past the deadline. 
There's also ten other things going on in the background. I know most of them will fail but I also know that if I do ten things, at least one of them will work. So I do a lot because the one that works, is always worth it. 
And I must get back to it. 

The Impossibility Of A Normal Day

I think there are two things everyone has, the one is The Great Sadness and the other is How Weird I Really Am. I think everyone has them but only some of us are brave enough to talk about them.

I don't know if I'm brave but I do know that sometimes I'm sad and sometimes, I worry about how weird I really am and if you do too, that's ok.

We'll both be ok. We'll both be weird and sad and ok together.

The Safety Of Death

Death isn't when your heart stops.

Death is when you give up who you could be for the safety of who you are.

The Truth Is It's Just Something To Hold

I need you to hold this bell. I need you to hold it and think of me. I want your hand to shake, because you're thinking of me so hard. Then I want you to give it to me so I can keep it.

I want to be able to hold it, whenever I'm alone, and remember what it feels like when you're thinking of me too.

The Secret Zodiac

The stars that guide you might be too far away to ever see. 
Maybe there's some bright, secret sunlight somewhere in the universe, that really knows you, understands you, and knows what's going on. 

The Sharpening Of Nerves

"Why can't I turn this off? No one else seems to feel this the way I do."

"Because you, and others like you, are the nerve endings of the world. You need to be the ones who say 'Ow!' when the world cuts itself, so that they don't do it again. Others are the skin on the bottom of the feet, some are hands but you and others like you, you are the heart and the never endings that must feel everything that can be felt. I'm so sorry."

"Don't be sorry. I just wanted to know."