Why?

I guess some sort of intro is how I should have started this blog? I don't know. I'm new to all this. Not writing, I've written for a long time but more recently since it was  suggested as a therapy following a traumatic event a couple of years ago. Talking is supposed to be therapeutic too and boy do I love to talk. I've got an ology in talking! "Talk!" Said the therapist. "It will help! " But the people I wanted to talk to, the ones I yearned to comfort me, were no longer around. And so she suggested writing. I poo-poohed it at first. As if the counselling wasn't mumbo jumbo enough, you now wanted me, hard nut Jayno, to write down my FEELINGS?! Nah. Uh-uh. Nope. That's not me. But then I thought. COULD it possibly be me? Let's face it, I'd been doing it for years on Facebook and years before that in diaries, poems, & letters to my Smash Hits penfriends. Not necessarily feelings, but outpourings of words and thoughts. And so it got me thinking.

Those that know me well will know I'm a stationery freak. I abso-flippin LOVE stationery. Pencils, pens, writing paper, notebooks. Love, love, love! I have a drawer overflowing with the most beautiful unused notebooks and journals crying out to be showered with lovely words. Unused because they are just too exquisite to have those perfect pages spoiled. If I was going to try this writing lark I was going to need the right book. I had a good few to choose from. It needed to be calm - I would be opening my heart to its pages. I'd had enough chaos, it definitely needed to be calm. And pretty. Pretty enough for me to want to pick it up, caress the cover, turn the pages and put pen to paper. It should also have lines! Most definitely lines. What is writing paper without lines? I'll tell you what it bloody well is: its drawing paper that's what! All those years I got told off at junior school for having handwriting literally doing a ski jump down the page that Eddie the Eagle would be proud of! For God's sake give a girl some lined paper!

Is there anything as beautiful as writing with a quality fountain pen? The way it glides across the page as gracefully as an Olympic ice-skater, each looping letter painting a story of words before your eyes. I love turquoise ink and a fountain pen but alas, I rarely use either because I end up with more ink on me than on the page. I'm not sure if it's because I'm the daughter of a Master Roofer but I prefer a pencil. A Staedtler Noris HB to be precise. My dad was hardly ever seen without a pencil behind his right ear. Nor without his brown suede hat with a nail through the rim for that matter, but that's a memory that can save for another day. And for a good pencil comes the requirement of a decent pencil sharpener. I've never met anything the match of those old school sharpeners like this http://vintageitem.com/decoration/14469-vintage-pencil-sharpener-from-old-school.html

Anyway I digress. Get used to that, it will happen often. So I had the book. I had the pencil. I had all these thoughts and feelings scrambling around in my head, fighting each other, desperate for escape. Was I suitably equipped to help them abscond?

The first thing I learnt was, despite the jostling-like-the first-day-of-the-Selfridge's-sale going on inside my head, my thoughts did not necessarily want to perform to order. There I sat, pencil poised, expecting the words to flow. Nada. Nothing I tried would entice them from that safe, chaotic place inside my head. They were having none of it. That was hard to accept. I was ready but I wasn't READY. This has since taught me that no matter how prepared you think you are for something, until such time as that little switch inside your head is deployed, it just ain't gonna happen. No siree!  I struggled with that. Here I was, desperate to heal, having accepted I was the only one that could mend me and yet I, me, myself was refusing to play ball. I'll not lie, there were tears. But there'd already been an ocean of tears, so what matter a few more. It was a couple of weeks later that it suddenly came to me. I'd penned a poem, months earlier, a few days after the incident, shared it to Facebook. I eagerly scrolled back through my posts, picked up my pencil and turned to the first page.

I'm not one to make New Year resolutions. If I want to do something I do it. But at the beginning of this year I opened that drawer and begrudgingly took out another of those beautiful, pristine journals. With my turquoise pen in my hand I turned to the first page and began writing my goals for 2018. As the word 'write' appeared before me, there was a familiar chaotic jostling starting in my head as the thought of a blog came to my mind.