Writing my way through my life allowed me to understand my world, myself, and where the two intersected. It was also a way of explaining myself to other people. "I have a blog" is a pretty straightforward way of talking about the writing I did: it was opinionated, or thoughtful, or personal, or political. I know people who have read the whole thing, because they liked me or they liked my writing. (That is...a lot of reading. I'm a wordy bee sometimes!) Writing it propelled me forward, as well. This little blog opened some doors professionally, sure, but it also helped me work through some of the blunderbussing that was my late 20s and early 30s. Just a seemingly endless stream of words, all of them useful in some way, at least to me. The best ones were the ones I went back to ten or twenty times, obsessing over what I had written because they actually helped me get outside myself and realize what I had to realize. The worst ones were, at the very least, practice: a few hundred words a week to keep my fingers limber and my copy-editing sharp. Like doing scales, only less annoying to the neighbours.
In the last few years, some things have happened. Some good things, sure, but also some fucking bad things. And I realized, after my son was born, that I'd sort of lost the ability to write my way through it.
A while ago, I admitted to myself that I have a bunch of stuff I'm yearning to write about, on a molecular, soul-deep level, but I lack the courage. This is the shit that has made me feel exhausted, terrified, lonely, and ruined. It's nasty, gnarly, bone-crunching stuff. It's talking about sickness and bad marriages and mental health. It's naming names. It's admitting that I've been close to the abyss, that the ground has crumbled around me and a few solid people have held me up. Writing about all of it means really examining it, and to be honest, I'm scared.
Because some of what I've dealt with over the last four years or so has been mental health-related, writing about feeling crazy feels a bit like a conjuring trick: will laying it out bare give it more power, like oxygen to a flame? Or will it wither and die when exposed to too much light? Will putting it down on paper make it realer? Will people look at me sidelong, like I've lost some essential handle on adulthood? Will they take my kid away? Will they put me in jail? Will I lose my job or the respect of the people I care for? Does talking about feeling crazy actually make it so? Is it safer to shove that part away, shove it down, gag it, strangle it, starve it? Deny it exists, and put on another coat of veneer?
If it sounds like I'm being melodramatic, you haven't been listening to these howling, fucked-up thoughts in my head.
And it's not just the intrusive thoughts. Really talking about what's happened in my marriage is opening up a huge can of worms: shame, embarrassment, fear, rejection, sadness, grief. And if things are good, or at least improving, then what's to be gained by dragging all those damned skeletons out of the closet for closer examination? "Oh, detective, it looks like this one really had its feelings hurt!" Much easier just to keep them in situ, tucked behind my summer clothes and the pants that no longer fit.
But, then again. If writing is my process, and I'm not writing, then how do I process?
There are those old stupid adages "Do one thing every day that scares you!" and "Courage is feeling the fear and doing it anyway!" both of which are fine if you are naturally brave and/or have a chilled-out life. I know plenty of people for whom these could be a mantra, and the idea of writing about their 2016-2019 inclusive would be, like, a big ol' shrug.
Writing about this peculiar kind of writer's block is my roundabout way of admitting that some topics are top of mind, and to write about anything else feels horribly inauthentic. When I really want—nay, need—to talk about my emotional state, the idea of writing about, like, Game of Thrones or which politicians I currently hate the most seems, not even silly, but like an active lie. And it's also a weird way of asking permission: will I alienate the people I respect by diving deep on this stuff? Much of it is very unpretty; I haven't yet turned a corner on a lot of it, and I'm not going to be anyone's bubbly influencer guru on loss, grief, or that shitty voice in your head that will sometimes stand in the corner and list everything that's wrong with you.
And again: I'm scared. It sounds dumb to be afraid of writing, but there's something about what I'm currently avoiding that seems like it would open floodgates, or lead to realizations that I would have preferred to have left undiscovered, or drive off the people who had helped me stay sane. I'm scared of more loss and grief, and the fear of creating it through my own writing seems preposterous but it's very real. (And yes, I know, I could journal and keep it all under lock and key, but the process would be the same re: floodgates and realizations. At least with blogging, there's sometimes a sense of give and take with people who have had similar experiences, or who can at least remind me that I'm generally okay, despite my critical interiour voice and/or the wolves that sometimes sneak under the door of my brain.)
At this point, just writing about writing feels good. It's a stretch, a good one, like after a long nap on a cold day. But it's not the main event, and I know it. So I'm working up the courage to get in there and unpack allllll the shit that has been giving me grief over the last few years. There's a lot. It's not appealing. I've been a huge mess, and I've talked about some of it with some people but no one has heard the whole story. (This sounds so dramatic! It isn't. It's just above-average hardships for white people in their 30s.) And maybe I'm asking for permission, or encouragement, or waiting for the right moment, but none of that will really come meaningfully from external sources. It's coming from me or not at all.
So stay tuned, I guess? I guess this is me saying, I'm going to try?
