Cassandra "Caz" Stark

I have so many half-written blog posts. Just… sitting. Almost always, when this happens, I find myself wanting to write more. I feel as though I have so much to say that I don’t ever say it. That’s life.

I suppose it’s hard to write when I also routinely maintain two journals – a sort of “one sentence a day” photo journal and my BeMo. Call it writer’s block, busy, overwhelmed, lost in a solopreneur tunnel, or a variety of other surface-level excuses, but I’m practiced. I Know better. This is not new. In fact, this has very little to do with writing at all and almost everything to do with being heard.

Writing is usually my solace – how I allow myself to be seen/heard/known by unapologetically bringing my deeper thoughts to the surface. But writing here? For you? That’s different.

You know that moment that you’re finally willing to say something out loud, surrounded by a low buzz of the familiar comfort of a room full of people ignoring you and only one particular person is trying so hard to listen, itching the scratch of validation so satisfyingly that even as the lean slightly forward and say, “huh?” you’re willing to repeat yourself louder with the precise timing of suddenly being the only one speaking in the midst of a brief, quiet moment where it feels as though everyone’s eyes are asking you, WTF did you just yell?

That sort of thing is such a thing in my life that anyone close to me lovingly refers to it as “Pulling a Caz.”

My other, not-so-quirky-charming MO are those moments where I have sooooooooooooooo much to say that in the assumed familiarity of not mattering to anyone around me, I go right ahead and spew regurgitated, repeated ventings like A Christmas Story father in the midst of a fight with the basement furnace – grumbling, not even slightly under my breath – confident that no one will understand me. EVER.

So, as I said, it isn’t about writing. It rarely is.

I can come in here like a thousand blog posts before now and stay at the surface – placing my grumbly frustrations in my relationship, myself, or my work because a thousand times before I have had little understanding of how any of those three things are separate.

But this is different.

I am different.

I still grumble. I still fight. I still have seemingly practiced, run-on sentences of explicative ventings that stream between pressed lips and held breaths, only to realize I’m the only one covered in angry, steaming soot. Projection is the only truth.

When it comes to the things I say, I’m doing much better. I have more of a voice. I understand my Needs have a place in line with everyone less – that people are allowed to say no and that means nothing, and I am allowed to voice what I Need because that means everything. Balanced.

But as all healing works, fixing one thing generally means it manifests in other ways – like going removing processed sugar from your diet and suddenly having a deep, unsatiated craving for onions. Onions? WTF onions? Ohhhhhh. Right. Sugar.

We all need a protected, genuine need for understanding – seen, known, heard, recognized, supported, validated. There are many different words for this, and all of them manifest with different charges, at different frequencies, and with different velocities that pertain only to our unique selves. Right now, my need for stasis, reverence, and completion is so strong amidst months of feeling behind, lost, and a pendulum swing of motivated/demotivated by a harsh overwhelm, that my core Need for being seen/heard/known comes very slowly to a place that exists only exists between myself and the page.

But I am here. And part of me is screaming. So much of me is stacking idea after idea of things I want to say among moments of convincing myself it is not time.

Maybe it isn’t.

I firmly believe that things happen as they should, when they should; that procrastination isn’t always as active – it is the Universe saying, “Look over here, my love, there’s more to learn before you go on.” I’ve been trying to learn. I’ve been willing to Know. But there’s so much on the table – so much that I want to share with you at the risk of not fully being there for myself. I will. I will share. In time.

For now, I want you to know I am thinking about you. I am thinking about writing here to all of you every day. So, at least for now, I’ve given myself permission to say less or perhaps… more. To do it differently by daring to remain incomplete.

Not The End.