Little steps
As you know, I have undertaken an effort to update and revive my blog. That’s two years worth of backlogs, two years worth of life that had passed me by while I was up in my blank gray cloud of psychiatric medicines that are slowly being adjusted to taper off their intensity, being awakened only now and then by Mr. T and the sunshine and music that he brings. Now I am completely off my medication, back to reading (with my brand new Kindle Touch that makes me smile everyday), and I am trying to write again.
It’s not easy. And although I have been able to write sporadically over the past six months or so, mostly for work, I am lukewarm about what I have accomplished then. It was not quite the real me, not quite the complete me. I didn’t feel the fire inside. I didn’t feel the strong, painful gush of water drowning me. I didn’t feel the tightening of my chest, didn’t feel my hands tremble as I wrote down the words, didn’t see that psychedelic swirl at the back of my eyes, didn’t see vast curtains of sound billowing in my head. I didn’t feel like I was in this bright, empty, massive cathedral, all alone in the center of it, writing, with my thoughts echoing all throughout the space, challenging and confirming everything I hold dear. There was no giddy-ness, no other-worldliness, no feeling of strange right-ness in it. It was as if whatever I wrote then was just something to get me by. I wrote just to keep backlogs at bay. I didn’t write because of the passion for writing, since there was none.
It takes a lot of work. Even when I still used to write they way I should -- if there is such a way of writing -- it has always taken a lot of work as well. The settling in, the gathering of my thoughts, the zoning out of the outside world, the committing of the first sentence down to paper, and the action of keeping at it, writing, writing, writing, writing, until some sensible paragraph comes out, entails a lot of intensity and concentration that need to be sustained for long amounts of time. I end up forgetting to eat, sleep, call people, and charge my phone.
I am not back in that state yet. I’m just blogging for now, and revisiting some old drafts, hoping that they’ll spark something in me sometime soon. But I’ll get there; I just don’t know when. And that’s okay. I can still see far into the horizon, and I know someday I'll be running again.
It’s not easy. And although I have been able to write sporadically over the past six months or so, mostly for work, I am lukewarm about what I have accomplished then. It was not quite the real me, not quite the complete me. I didn’t feel the fire inside. I didn’t feel the strong, painful gush of water drowning me. I didn’t feel the tightening of my chest, didn’t feel my hands tremble as I wrote down the words, didn’t see that psychedelic swirl at the back of my eyes, didn’t see vast curtains of sound billowing in my head. I didn’t feel like I was in this bright, empty, massive cathedral, all alone in the center of it, writing, with my thoughts echoing all throughout the space, challenging and confirming everything I hold dear. There was no giddy-ness, no other-worldliness, no feeling of strange right-ness in it. It was as if whatever I wrote then was just something to get me by. I wrote just to keep backlogs at bay. I didn’t write because of the passion for writing, since there was none.
It takes a lot of work. Even when I still used to write they way I should -- if there is such a way of writing -- it has always taken a lot of work as well. The settling in, the gathering of my thoughts, the zoning out of the outside world, the committing of the first sentence down to paper, and the action of keeping at it, writing, writing, writing, writing, until some sensible paragraph comes out, entails a lot of intensity and concentration that need to be sustained for long amounts of time. I end up forgetting to eat, sleep, call people, and charge my phone.
I am not back in that state yet. I’m just blogging for now, and revisiting some old drafts, hoping that they’ll spark something in me sometime soon. But I’ll get there; I just don’t know when. And that’s okay. I can still see far into the horizon, and I know someday I'll be running again.
posted by Maryanne Moll | 12:01 AM
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