It's been a long time since I felt that I was in the right place, doing what I felt I should be doing.
The last time I felt this way was when I was working in Africa. Yes, I was tremendously upset and depressed - yes, I missed Sjors every day. But I knew that what I was doing was on the right track. As if everything in my soul aligned to say, "this is important. This is correct".
The years since have been so wrong. I've never felt right about where I was, or what I was doing. Thrashing around, hunting for the purpose and truth that would make it right again. And work in trauma therapy has taught me to accept what is, not to live in what should have been. But there is no joy in this acceptance. Only a sort of dullness and rot in the world as I stand helplessly by and watch the mundane horrors we bring - with no power to change them.
And perhaps that's why publishing a book has been so unsatisfying. I thought that having my voice back would give me that sense of purpose again. But it hasn't. Where I was once expansive, feeling as though I could bring my ideas and data into the world, there is no hope. I am retracted and different now. And although I hoped to change the world with what I thought and wrote in the same way that I was changing things in Africa, the small corner of the world that reads my words feels only entertainment.
This was no clearer to me than when it came to the adaptation - and the soul of what I'd written had been completely discarded. As if they hadn't even noticed it. And I realize that I can't be seen in this way. I can't write for entertainment. That was never what I wanted. That was never my purpose.
I feel sick about it. And all I can do is pray that nobody pays for the garbage. That my work is not taken forever.
Last night I dreamed that I was on a naval base. Not any base I'd been on - but a place in "Yoruba" - which is not an actual city, but refers to the people in West Africa. And I realized that I'm spilling out my life in purposeless activities, hoping that meaning will find its way back to me. No longer expansive, I'm looking to satisfy my own mind and my own comfort, as if this will bring me peace. It will not bring me peace. And this frittering away of time, my efforts to write what is wanted, not what is driven from my soul, will only end in misery.
I must change direction. Go back to the things that mattered. My soul is not for sale.
