Free-fall

‘Just write.’

I repeat these words to myself.

Because it is what she’s told me would be the cure.

Like it’s easy!

Even though it should be. I’ve told everyone I know that writing is like breathing to me. And it used to feel like that too, an extension of myself. I didn’t have to think too hard. Those were happier times. I had a time set aside for my writing, a routine I had broken in and was comfortable with. The only time of day I looked forward to eagerly.

Now, I break out into a panic attack whenever I’m before an empty page.

But I try to keep it together this time because we all want to desperately believe that I’m getting better and I don’t want to shake their confidence anymore. Time off didn’t help me get in the right head space.

I can’t quite remember how I fell away from the one thing that gave me a bit of purpose but they told me not to focus so deeply on that. My goal should be on improving the future, not understanding the past.

Yet I wonder, don’t I need to understand the past before I can improve the future? What if I fall prey to the same evil that waylaid my dream?

‘Write anything.’

I try to convince myself.

There are so many stray thoughts and I should be able to grab just one and run with it.

But they don’t please me and writing stopped being a fruitless passion when I decided it was my entire identity. I refuse to write if won’t make sense to anyone. I’ve heaped a lot of pressure on myself to achieve some form of perfection that is constantly fleeting.

There are a number of things that scare me when I think of writing. This fear has kept me awake at night, trying to figure out who I am if I’m not a writer. This fear has kept me away for so long, hyperventilating at the thought that I won’t amount to anything, or at the very worst…that I won’t ever write beautifully again. Even simply. I don't mind. As long as I'm doing what I blindly believe I was born to do.

  The

I type the first word and feel all my enthusiasm run out. I stare at it for the foreign creation it has now become yet, somehow, also familiar. I remember the stories I wrote down that started with ‘The’ and I shudder. I don’t want to be a washed out writer, with my best work behind me even when I am constantly seeking growth.

Shouldn’t my craft have grown through this? Don’t I have so much to write from my experience?

I’m here because there is a story in my head that won’t give me peace till it has been written. And I want to do it justice. I thought it was the perfect time to return; where the world was complete and the words would flow, when it didn’t seem like I was begging to be kissed with the gift I had so often taken for granted.

‘Word after word.’

I think of what I could add to it.

Revising all the things I had learnt for my trade.

I had never planned to stay away this long that what came so naturally now feels like an uphill task. What’s the object of the story? Or the subject? I start to wonder if the dam in my head will open if I can pinpoint exactly why I took a break.

It’s like eating, she said, follow each fork with another till the plate is clear except that here I have to follow each word till the page is full. Slow bites so that I don’t suffer from indigestion. Slow progress so that I don’t retire to my bed questioning who I am if I can’t write.

  The boy

I erase that. I am not sure I want to start from a male perspective.

There were days when I would forego meals to have a story down. Who needed food when there were characters to help with their own messed up lives?

It’s like eating alright, a great story has always left me more satisfied than the cheap buffets I’ve taken to stalking in this hiatus. Desperately looking for something that could fill me up like writing did.

The girl

Too much pressure and emotion in that.

I decide to take a different approach. Think outside the box a little. I can’t have taken all this time off to come back with a generic story, even though it should be the path to inspire courage. The path of least resistance.

I’m starving for a good story and my body responds to this physically. I get a pack of cookies to keep me company as I suffer through the unknown.

  The dog

This makes me smile and I hope whoever reads that will think so.

Nothing is final though, I’m just writing this to get my creative juices flowing. I’ll edit without mercy like I was taught. At least I remember that bit.

I bite into a cookie and start to assuage my hunger.

‘After word.’

I admire the patience we exhibit.

Stacking up words little by little like little building blocks. Like my confidence.

And within time I have a sentence.

This might be the breakthrough I need. Even though it is taking longer than any of us imagined. I remember what it was like to scribble a thousand notes around me for the stories in my head. I missed that the most at the start of my break but finally it faded into the background like everything in life that gets ignored. The characters got tired of waiting to have their say and slowly departed from me as well.

I had never felt so alone in my life!

My head had never been empty since I was seven, when I stopped fighting the characters that came to me for a home and a life. It's hard to remember a time when all I had to contend with were my thoughts and my singular perspective on life.

I want to be kind to myself and say that I suffered from a severe ‘writer’s block’ because if it has a name then I’m that much closer to finding a solution. It felt more than that. But everyone else around me dismissed it and I found myself dismissing it.

I took my break, thinking it was a little like rehab. Obsessing over my writing was getting in the way of life. If that is even possible. So I decided to assess it all, to get my writing on the path I wanted it to be at with no pressure. Or so I really thought.

Every writer has one of these moments.

They say that to comfort me but it aggravates me the more. I don’t want to be bundled up with ‘every writer’. I’ve always wanted to stand apart like I’ve been sure I am. The word ‘special’ floats around somewhere in my head and refuses to attach itself to my name.

It’s true that in my time away I’ve been learning humility. Something to combat the pride I had puffed up on.

In this time I’ve learnt a whole lot of things - all of them writing, all of them life.   

‘Like doodling.’

Except that it’s nothing like doodling.

Sitting here with inanimate keys that mock me.

My brain-hand transmitters are fried and the story starts to pull into annoyance when the hands refuse to do what they are meant to in this writing dance.

I’ve battled with thoughts on my future, my future in writing that is. This thoughts have been more like doodling than this idle writing. Looping and looping round in my head. Pointing out mercilessly where I have been failing. Telling me without respite that I’ll never amount to anything. I hear them trying to roar out loud now - how no one will read what I write, how it’s nothing ‘special’.

She must sense this because she urges me to rise above the thoughts. The only thing that will silence them, and I have come to believe this too, is if I write down something. Anything. To prove to myself…and the voices…that I might know a little of what I’m doing.

I want to say that I took a break to take a well needed vacation, white sand and cool waves. I never want to admit that I needed help and sought out treatment, hard couches and bleak walls. It seems weird, that I would need treatment for a passion.

But why wouldn’t I need treatment for passion if passion is synonymous with suffering and agony!

‘Write for yourself.’

I wonder why this wasn’t the first bit of advice.

I don’t think it relieves the pressure like it is supposed to though.

There have been moments in this break where I have screamed to be rid of the desire to write.

To write.

To write!

I need to send in this writing anyway. She doesn’t need to know this. I need the money. And she needs to get paid. So I’m not just writing for myself but to appease faceless judges. The voices in my head take this lapse in thought and seize control. ‘You will never amount to anything.’ and I want to close it all up. Throw away the laptop and all the notebooks that make the shrine by my bedside.

I have considered giving writing up, besieged with doubts as I’ve been, wondering if this is where I’m supposed to be. Questioning whether I wasn’t simply an impassioned lover led on by what was simply a short lived affair and now left to pick up the pieces on my own.

Is writing what I’m supposed to do at all?

Or I held on too strongly to what should have been and remained a hobby I dabble in once in three months?

The questions come like the onslaught they are.

I want to know there is purpose to my writing. More than anything. Writing for myself is a little biased and what I consider to be my best work may be nothing but child’s play to another. I need that feedback. I need to better myself. I need to be a master of my trade.

I need to silence the voices in my head.

‘Write honestly!’

I can finally hear the frustration in her voice.

Four months of therapy without progress are good grounds for frustration.

For the both of us.

I expected to pound away once I got to my work station.

Maybe healing is a fleeting excuse to stay away from what I love. Maybe the voices are not going anyway and they serve a purpose beyond what I have allowed myself to see.

I erase the sentences I’ve written and decide to get serious about getting back to writing. I think of easier times then discard them. It doesn’t help to constantly look back when my life is always being propelled forward, regardless of my inaction. There has got to be a time when I take the reins. And there is no time like the present.

I write honestly.

About the voices in my head. About my insecurity. About my passion. About my dreams. All this from a perspective of a person I’ll never be! It allows me to explore the dynamics without the emotion that has me coiling up in the corner late at night. Unable to breathe through my lungs unless I breathe through my words.

I write!

I hope against hope that someone will relate to this writing. I’m not picky anymore. I know even one reader is a breath of fresh air to this dying career.

And I write.

Because buried underneath all the doubt is a heart that knows nothing else. A heart that wants nothing else.

She keeps on with her encouraging statements and I drown her out. A little too excited that I’ve finally come to the point where I may not need her anymore.

The words come gushing out, begging to be told, pushing to make their impact. With the flow, I fall back into a well-worn pattern. It doesn’t matter why I fell away, the same may creep up or I may face something new but I hope I never forget this feeling. That working with the words is when I'm most alive.

‘I think…I think I finally have something.’ At long last, I respond to the voice on the phone, that has graciously - and with unyielding persistence - borne with my silence. My therapist. I know that I am paying for this but I appreciate her sitting with me as I work through the knots in my brain-finger transmitters.

She asks me to read out loud what I have written. It feels vulnerable, too exposed but I do it anyway. It might help to get the perspective of someone else. I see the places where the sentences fall flat and edit as I work.

The finished work, still with plenty of places where it can be improved, smiles back at me.

I'm an album of emotion when I face the truth head on.

This is all I want to do, no matter how many times it tears me down.