Finding the words
May28
If you knew me in “real life” you might find it weird that I keep a blog… or not…
I have a strained relationship with words and writing. Its almost as my ability for hands-on creativity has a restraining order against me, I must stay at least 100 cm away from anything remotely creative and only admire from a distance.
Yet I have a blog, and I occasionally write here. I have also kept an online “diary” relatively successfully for about 10 years on Open Diary. Not as a daily practice, but at least a few posts a month… So there is proof that I *CAN* write…
Just not the way I want to… not the places I want to or the subjects or genres or using the materials i would like to use.
I experience an almost paralyzing anxiety… its very odd and very complicated.
From age 5 until I was about 13 I was a compulsive writer/colourer/drawer… if I could get a hold of a piece of paper and some form of writing implement I was all over it. GirlChild is EXACTLY the same way. I filled pads of paper, lined notebooks, memo books, and even rolls of register paper (you know, from cash registers or adding machines? yeah) with every imaginable thing — I practiced printing and handwriting, drew pictures, devised codes, tracked every imaginable quantitative event, wrote fiction, poetry, and plays… you name it I probably scribbled it on something somewhere.
By age 13 I had started to compulsively carry spiral bound notebooks around with me everywhere I went. I had a book for ideas and a book for stories and a book for poems and a book for the novel I was writing. And at home, where no one could find it, I started a diary.
Eventually I stopped having separate books for different things and just had one book for everything writing and drawing related that I carried, along with assorted pens, pencils and colouring devices which I used during the day, and my diaries, kept in my room where they couldn’t be discovered.
This continued until I was 18. I FILLED numerous books with scribblings and ideas and words and drawings. I filled BOOKS with journaling. I thought nothing of the fact that I wrote compulsively… that I expressed my thoughts and feelings in words. I thought it was NORMAL for me to pound out 20 single-space, double sided sheets of binder paper a day on a novel, play or poetry.
Until the day it all stopped.
I can’t point to any ONE thing that caused the shift in my thinking, and its likely that it was not just one thing but a combination of things that caused the rift between myself and my creative side:
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I started dating a boy (I will not say man, because he wasn’t a man in any sense of the word) which quite quickly became both very serious and VERY dangerous
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I started university and with that came an attitude change from “being creative” to “being studious”
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I had less free time — between full time studies and having to be mindful of my boyfriend full time
I changed from a girl who was creative and care-free to a woman who was anxious and always having to be mindful of various factors of her environment. I had a boyfriend who was very emotionally needy and unstable (he was later diagnosed as bipolar, but at that time he didn’t know it) and demanded a lot from me — I was given rule after rule after rule for my life… and the amazing thing is that I never QUESTIONED these rules or regulations at all (and I dated him for 3 years!!)…
I suspect (but have no direct proof) that my boyfriend at that time was reading my notebooks and journals during our relationship. While I can’t remember specifics of conversations a lot of the time, I do remember that I started to self-edit my journals… resorting to creating a sort of coded language to write anything I suspected I would get into trouble for. After a while I felt so nervous about what I was writing or doodling in my diaries and journals that I was hiding not only my diaries but ALL my books and markers and pencils and paints…
I know there were “rules” put forth, I know there were restrictions. I can’t remember what or why… but they got internalized — the fear of having things read, of being caught writing or doodling or journalling got worse and worse.
The specific rules have faded to the point that I am not sure what the rules really ARE. Instead I am left with the lingering feeling of unease when picking up a pen to write in a book.
“Unease” is such a wimpy word for how I feel… The feeling is emotional and physical at the same time, a deep, creeping sense like itching inside my chest, inability to breathe, and pounding heartbeat. Emotionally I feel anxious — fight or flight type of panic overwhelms me. Mentally I feel that I am doign something “wrong” or against some rule, I feel sitting and writing is “lazy” like I should be doing something else (anything else!!) like cleaning the house or baking or attempting to knit (and when I attempt to knit I feel I should be trying to scrapbook…etc). I have it in the back of my mind things like:
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“this is a waste of time”
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“look at how messy the handwriting is”
And recently whenever I start to write (or knit or scrapbook or do anything creative) I feel the muscles in my hands and arms (particularly my right hand and wrist, which is the hand I use to WRITE with (although I don’t have the same issue when I type, and I do a lot MORE of that and i SHOULD be getting carpal tunnel about… oh… NOW…)) to the point that sometimes holding a pen is painful…
I think I am “stuck”… I don’t know how to unclog this drain…
The problem is that I have a lot of ideas and words and things inside of me, and no way to express them “safely” (yet). When I sit to think about it, when I go to DO something to relieve the pressure in my heart I get the pain in my hands. Its an information bottleneck… and I’m not sure where to go from HERE…
I know THESE things to be true:
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I love to use words.
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I love to write
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I want to express myself
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I have something to say
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I want to share this aspect of myself with my children
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this will allow me to heal from the emotional and spiritual aspects of the abusive relationships that I rose above*
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Once I am able to start exploring my creative side I will be better able to open up SPIRITUALLY
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* I have decided I am not going to fall into feeling like I was a “victim” of abuse. I was abused, it is a statement of something that I allowed into my life for a brief period and which I choose to walk away from. While there have been lasting effects, I can rise above and relearn to become myself… This is MY paradigm shift, I do not expect anyone else to utilize it…
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