Epigraph Revisited

I've been really thinking about the epigraph post. Something has been bothering me about it. I felt as if I was being a bit untruthful. I didn't dig deep enough for it, perhaps. I remembered, finally, that there was a little rhyme I had come up with when I was about 12 or so, which I would write onto the first page of all my notebooks. Anything I wrote in for me, for school, for anything. I remember doing this up in till my early twenties. Funny enough I stopped reciting it about the same time I stopped writing for me. I still told stories, mostly to myself and to a few others who would ask, but I stopped writing them down. So I bought a notebook this week and the first thing I did was open it up and on the first page I wrote:

Lady Luck, where are thee

Come and rest your favor on me

Lest I fail and fall distraught

Into Fortune’s melting pot

- ADC

I remember feeling immensely clever when I came up with this. So proud of myself! I used “thee” and “distraught”. I gave Fortune a melting pot and it rhymed! This was something I could be happy that I wrote and even all these years later (22 to be exact) I am still impressed with kid me. I used to call this my little school prayer. It was my way of asking for help to do what I want or what I needed to do in that notebook.

I wonder when or where exactly I was when I lost faith in my little prayer. I would like to think that if it was an EVENT, I would remember. I think my faith was lost as most things are; carelessly. I got distracted, I didn't pay attention. I was too busy being a grownup and feeding, sheltering and supporting family, romantic partners that I forgot to feed and shelter all of myself. I shut that bit away, because I thought it would always be there. It had always been there, so how could I have known that it would get so stale and rusty that I would even lose my little prayer.

So now I want to resurrect it. Breathe new life into it. I want to go back to the relief of pen meeting paper and the drive to empty myself of words again. I need to allow myself to be full of words again. I am looking forward to when I no longer have to consciously flip that mental lock and let them in the back door, but they just wander in on their own, in their own forms and hang out at the kitchen table; waiting for me to come make them a cup of tea and start the game.