For the longest time, I couldn't write anything. Anxiety had me quite firmly in its wretched, unrelenting grip. I felt like my mind was trapped in a prison of its own making. It is a scary, tortuous thing, to be contained in that way. Life was not what it once was. It was hardly life at all, some days.
When I'm ready, I'll write about it, tell you more about the journey, how I got from that place of fear and loneliness to the place where I am today, once again comfortable in my own skin. I'm not there yet.
Today, I want to talk about writing. I missed it so very much, missed the feel of keys underneath my fingers, the feel of a pen touching paper, the stories that had always freely flowed through my mind and in my dreams. It took time, quite a bit of it, but I finally clawed my way out of that black hole.
If I can do it, so can you. That applies whether writing is your thing or not. Whatever your thing IS, you can and will get it back. You just have to want it badly enough.
I can always tell when I haven’t written in awhile. My fingers,
like my mind, are just a bit rusty. I have to sit down and somehow convince my
brain to shake off the cobwebs, to wake up. I can sit, staring, at a blank
page, for what sometimes seems like hours. Not lost, simply caught inside myself;
stuck in an anxious pause where I don’t know what to say next.
But I’m the writer. I can’t be at a loss for words. And yet, when
I haven’t written in awhile, somehow I am.
Words are a writer’s best friend and nemesis all rolled up into
one. And I actually believe that’s a good thing. Though it’s hard to see it
sometimes, the words that I want are actually there; like the lump that forms
in the back of my throat when I’m overcome with emotion, the one I try to
swallow down, force away (to no avail, of course). They are there, building up
in the space inside my head where creativity lies, swelling like a wave just on
the verge of breaking. I just have to remember how to harness them, to grasp
those thoughts and ideas and present them properly.
So I write. I write about anything. I write about clouds. I write
about ghosts. I write about the past, the future, the here and now, the never
again and the never will be. I write about random objects and people I’ve never
met and nature and God. The thing is, if I am writing, I am writing about
something, and it doesn't matter if it will ever hold meaning to anyone but myself.
Fellow writers, I'll tell you this: It doesn’t
matter what the words are, simply that they are there, that they are held
within your grasp and that you are the one in control. You have the power within you, to tell whatever story you want to tell. Don't let anything stop you.
