How I came to dislike my muse

Like any good long-term relationship, I met my muse in our childhoods. I was an elementary school kid in North Texas, standing against a brick wall to avoid the winter wind and feeling about as forgotten and empty as possible. I was still too young to recognize the feeling. But from somewhere I found this almost sing-songy expression of that feeling. Letting it have voice made me feel better.

In junior high, I used an assigned essay to become an inanimate object, a blade of grass, and express my life as such. I never knew from where the idea sprung up and the teacher gave me a cockeyed look for my seventh-grade strangeness. But a reluctant "A."

The muse and I really got personal in high school. That feeling from back in elementary school had never been resolved, but the muse's voice had become more focused and louder. It went directly into print. I'd crawl into a secluded corner with the muse and simply be surprised at what came out. It was about me and those around me, but it was things about which I was consciously unaware. Until the muse told them to me and made me say them.

Throughout all those years I'd had a relationship with words, but there was a growing delineation between what I said and the muse said. By the time I was a high school senior, I had a bi-weekly column in the school newspaper. But I always knew that was a character that I'd created, in part to hide the muse and the relationship I had with her. I could be a "writer" without being in danger of exposure.

About that same time, I also formed a relationship with alcohol. For several years, it was as if the drinks were my muse's portal. I'd become more uncomfortable with how well she knew me and what she made me admit and say. So I'd tried to be the character from the column more than the one the muse knew and used. But after a bout with alcohol, I'd sometimes awake to find the extended and sloppy scribbles of the muse and I wrestling in the deep night. I was stunned at how truthful and open they were. I learned from them. But I didn't want to live with them.

There came a time when I found I could drown the muse in that alcohol. I could refuse to speak to her, not see and hear her wisdom and truths. Decades later, I found that I wasn't really silencing those, but delaying them. They'd lay in wait somewhere inside me, quite often fermenting into something ugly and decimating to my life and my other relationships. I came to view the muse and her truth as a demon. Finally, I knew I had to look that demon in the eyes or it would kill me. It became a monumental struggle, but once the muse and I regained trust, we returned to lovers.

I still find it hard having a muse. She makes me uncomfortable because she calls me on my bullshit and makes me want better for myself. My muse has shown me I'm often someone who settles by speaking to me about what I really want and what reality should be. It infuriates me. It also makes me more than I show. So, I listen.

All my life, I've found having a muse to be a burden. My muse is so beautiful, I'm uncomfortably aware how others desire her. I feel unworthy to have her. I fully expect her to desert me, so I treat her badly to beat her to the punch. She cries softly for the longest periods, which disturbs me even more. But when I lose my insecurity and we make love, it is so far above anything else in my world or what I see anyone else has, I try to make amends.

But I became especially weary recently. One of the things my muse harps upon is taking chances. I had managed to completely stop that. Except in one special instance. I trusted. And it went wrong. Of course, the culprit was my muse.

For a self-mandated two months, I locked my muse in a far away room. If she whispered or screamed at me, I refused to listen. I wanted to live like those who have no muse, to see if it is a better, at least simpler, life.

Those two months have passed. I didn't like the time. It wasn't difficult, but it felt so bland, so ordinary, so pointless. It was like a clock just ticking to get to the next second.

This is my reintroduction letter to my muse. I don't know if she'll accept it. I'm honestly not certain I want her back with the same previous gusto, although the intensity has never been a choice. I'm lightly tapping on the door I myself locked.

I don't really know if there's anyone in there at all.