It's not due to a lack of desire to write, or (I would hope) a lack of ability. It's felt...like an injury was healing, like something inside was broken, something integral to the writing process, and all I could do was let it be while I pulled myself back together.
I'm certain that I'm not the first, especially in today's world, to go on and on about how a life of student loan debt and working mindlessly through a job (many jobs, over time) that I wasn't happy in chipped away at my happiness, edged into my mind and my spirit and bogged it down with doubt and...dejection. I'm not the first, and I unfortunately won't be the last - but so, I won't go on about how I got to this place. I will only say that I was there.
I haven't been writing for months now...
In some ways that isn't true, because I have friends that I have written with - short, sometimes silly, always fun pieces of writing where our characters interact together on their adventures and through their fictional lives. I have done writing, in that I have strung together words into sentences, stacked those together into paragraphs, and utilized those paragraphs to create a comprehensive piece of writing for others to read within a writing game. I did this...in some ways to lift my spirits, but also to keep myself writing something. I could feel that something within me was broken, that the proverbial "writing muscle" inside was torn. I knew that I needed to let it heal, and these writing games were my way of making sure that when it did heal, it wouldn't be out of commission.
I haven't...really been writing...for some months now...
I remember, at some of the peaks in my writing path, how it would feel to sit and close my eyes, listening to the voices and songs that called softly but surely...to me. Called for me to listen carefully to the stories that were told on the wind, to listen for the poems that might form on the paper before me if I just sat quietly enough to hear them.
For so many months now, I...could not hear them.
I tried, oh how I tried. I sat with my eyes closed, clenching my eyes shut and gritting my teeth against the tears that fell. If I could just listen, if I could just hear those sounds on the wind once more I knew that I could write. Here I was, finally free of the weight that a "day job" hung around my neck, free once more to pursue the beauty within my spirit and around me, winding together with my soul and begging to be freed as well. Here I was, finally free...and terrified that I was deaf to them now. Anxiety clenched tightly around my heart, choking me at the faintest sign of even the smallest triggers.
And what was I supposed to do? Weeks passed, and as I learned to handle the anxiety, to recognize when a reaction was caused by it rather than my true self, I still found myself buried in it. Sounds are muffled all around you when you're buried. Voices on the distant wind are drowned out by the sound of rain against a window pane.
I haven't written anything for some months now. I've found myself seated by the window, leaning against the frame and staring out through the glass at the water falling around. I stopped trying to listen after the first month. I hadn't given up, not entirely, but I stopped trying to hear once I realized that all I could hear was rain. I was frightened that I wouldn't hear it again. I was terrified that the stories trembling within me would wither, turn to dust within my heart without ever calling out to the world, but I hadn't given up. I was hurt, but I could feel in my heart that it wasn't permanent. Even the spirit heals itself with time...
So I waited...
...one month...
...then two...
...three... .. .
. .. ...four.
A tap against the window pane,
a shadow through the curtain.
