Tag: writing

Autobiography

Stuck

Ruby Pipes36 Comments
“Stuck on You – HFF” © Nana B Agyei, 2010. CC BY 2.0.

I can’t write lately.

My moods are improving. Things seem to be leveling out. Medication doses stabilizing. Hormonal birth control abandoned. Therapy twice a week.

But I sit down to write and…

It’s like I’m all dried up. All talked out. Like everything has been scoped out from every angle and I have nothing left to say about it.

Instead, I want to take long walks to nowhere. Afternoon naps. Want to find a hobby, an escape that has nothing to do with words.

Or maybe I just feel stuck in general. We’re floating in that place between leaving and staying. Deposit down for a new place hundreds of miles away, but no move-in date.

My fingers itch to start putting things in cardboard boxes, to sign up for yoga classes I can walk to from our new apartment. To set up my new office and establish a new routine.

But instead I have to sit by the phone and hope our new manager will call and say, “Construction will be done next week, for sure. Move in whenever you’re ready!”

I float. Feeling like I already soaked up everything I can from this soil, but unable to leave.

Ever hopeful that maybe when we do things will start making sense again. That words will form into sentences. That my vision won’t blur around the edges. That I won’t feel like crying for no fucking reason. That it will make a difference.

Mental Health · Writing

One Thing

Ruby Pipes20 Comments
“Slow – Hwy 101 old growth” © Sam Bebee, 2005. CC BY 2.0.

I tell myself to do just one thing. Put clothes on. Eat something. Open up my computer and write a sentence, a word. One thing. Just one.

Then I think of how it will compound. How one thing leads to another and that’s how everything gets built. I lose track quickly of how important just focusing on the first step is. I start to zoom in on how all those little pieces will join together to make something I deem worthwhile. Then I’m not thinking about each individual part anymore. I’m thinking about the entire lifespan of the thing. Seeing the tree in the seed.

But there are seeds that never become trees at all. And trees that never soar above me. Never make me feel safe and small and powerful and insignificant all at once. Trees that turn into tables or door frames. Paper for notebooks. Trees that burn in fires. That live high in mountains, where the air is thin, and put in everything they can, but never get over three feet tall.

And I’m reminded not to get too caught up in the building. Not to cling too hard to the idea that one thing always becomes another and another. Or that it always needs to. Sometimes one thing is just that. You write one sentence and then you curl up on the floor and sob for the rest of the day. And that’s okay.

You don’t have to get bogged down by the bigness of the possibility. Not every word has to be part of the next great American novel. Not every day has to be dripping with productivity. Has to have tangible accomplishments to point to.

Not every seed exists to become towering.

Mental Health

The New Low

Ruby Pipes10 Comments
“dark moment on the road” © enki22, 2013. CC BY-ND 2.0.

I rode the wave for a couple of weeks. Could see the bottom, but my feet weren’t touching. Skirting the edge. Always.

Then, in the morning while I was standing in the bathroom doing my make up it finally caught up with me. Sinking. Gasping for air. Heart pounding. I was thirty minutes late for work.

When I got home my husband was still out. So I took a walk to nowhere in particular. Leaned against brick walls. Circled city blocks. Anything to not be home. To not be alone. Searched out safety.

Today I made it to the gym in the morning. But I didn’t make it to work. Laid on the couch in my gym clothes until noon. It got me.

Nothing “happened”. It’s always undramatic. The final switch flipped off, but the light it connected to was barely illuminating anything to begin with.

A slow sinking. A sun setting. Hurt that creeps in slow and disconnects me piece by piece until even the couch cushion I’m sitting on feels far away.

But somehow the work email was still checked and responded to. I didn’t drag myself to the store for bourbon or cigarettes or pints of ice cream. At no point did I curl up on the bathroom floor and sob. I didn’t take one of those five hour walks where I scrape my knuckles along concrete. Where I stand on the ground and look up at bridges and tell myself stories about how this all eventually ends.

Instead I watched a movie and a bunch of Seinfeld. Took a nap. Sat on the couch and stared out the window and texted my best friend.

And at 3:45 I got up, showered, and dressed. Sat down at our dining room table and wrote it all down. Tried to make sense of it. Tried to shake out patterns and identify sources. Pulled out fragments of my inner workings. Pieces of a pocket watch strewn in front of me. Each one serving a purpose I could name, clean off, and put back in.

It’s not getting any easier, but I’m getting better at it. At taking a breather and getting up again. If this is what bottoming out looks like now, I think I can deal with it.

Not gracefully. Not easily. I will not escape without wounds to lick.

But I think I can deal with it.