Clenched Fists Can't Type

2014.

There's so much I need to say, so very much dancing on the edge of my fingertips and my hands tremble, ready to say them.  Maybe this is the build up.  Maybe others hit and I write.
"Tell me what you've done," a lyric chimes as I pace around the empty house, all three roommates at work on a Saturday morning.  Seth follows my pacing.  Back and forth, up and down.  We sit.  We recline.  He barks at the neighbor who crosses through our yard once, twice, enough to rile my dog in the sort of way that makes me want to set him loose to attack.  I calm him instead.  I calm me.  Lower blinds, lower pulse, lower Seth's legs to the couch and pet him.  Still.
I reach out to Nick to tell him what I've been thinking a while now.  School beckons me back, but the field I want to get into, I'm nearly certain, does not exist.  Women's Studies is everywhere, and so I say to Nick, "What about Men's Studies?" and he jokes that he'd be glad to attend that class with me.  On a more serious note he says, "But, you already do that.  All the time.  It's how you date."
And he's right.  It hits me hard, pulses on the surface and sinks like something I've known well and for a while.  Setting my phone aside I stand to pace again.  There's always laundry.  Stairs, up and down.  Dust something.  Lay in my bed, alone, a moment.  Up again, a little folding.  And I collect my journals from shelves and tables and corners and bags and stack them at the computer desk in front of two open windows.  Have I forgotten how to write, I wonder.  Have I forgotten how to hit, to let this all out?  Did I ever, really?  Had I ever known how to release?  What's keeping me so quiet?  Where did this shame come from?