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But everything got on top of me – piling over my head in a constant, immeasurable and dense wave of things that should be done, that must be done. It was like running on a treadmill, feet hitting the belt without any conscious effort, without a line to cross - no foreseeable end, and no opportunity to drop the pace. I was trying to keep ahead, to push through and to not just make it through, to get what I had to get done, but to fucking nail it all. Impossible, I knew, but nonetheless I tried. I kept swimming to breach the surface of the water, but I was fighting a glass capped swimming pool.
But I stopped writing for myself. I had no enthusiasm to type more than I had to out of necessity. I wrote, often and in great volumes, and I wrote well, but I wrote for others. There was nothing alluring about my writing anymore, no emotion or imagery, but plain logic and competence. It evoked nothing more than praise for its conciseness and proficiency. Writing became just another part of my ever encroaching desire for efficiency and control.
But I wanted to write about how the sun on my face made me feel at 7:00am, about introspection, about love and its absense, about joy and about sadness, about the black box of resentment and misunderstanding deep in my belly. I wanted to write about my desire for someone to lay their head on the pillow, to face me, look into my eyes and not look away. I wanted someone to see me, to not be intimidated by the exterior that made them question whether I was flirting, or whether I was trying to destroy them. So many people couldn’t distinguish between the two - I had heard it often. “You’re so difficult to read”, “you’re just hard to figure out”. I would ask why? acting naive, as though I was confounded by even the suggestion of being indecipherable.
But I knew why. And I knew they didn’t mean it in an edgy and alluring way, in a way that evinced that I was some sort of perplexing siren; they meant it in the way that this personage that I asserted was intense, even angry; in a comical and jesting way of course, but regardless, subtly menacing and not-so-subtly domineering. I gave off a ‘I don’t give a fuck what you think of me’, but gainsaid an obvious longing for validation. Blunt, apathetic, collected, and a level above you. Empathetic, insecure, apprehensive and confound. What a mix. What a paradoxical mess.
But as I pushed anything in the way of literature other than legal jargon and white collar bullshit to the side, I watched my friends flourish creatively. They painted, drew, danced and crafted. I was in awe of their creations, their expressions and their release. Admiration and envy in an arm wrestle. It was like I was watching a game from the sidelines – no, from the bench. Because it wasn’t a case of wanting to be only a mere onlooker – I wanted to participate, i yearned for it, but felt I couldn’t, as though I didn’t have it in me. I wouldn’t spare myself the moment to sit down and just delve – to spill the fucking beans – to describe how I felt, to pick myself apart like I did everyone and everything else, and just contemplate and elucidate my own being, to myself.
But would I be faking it if I sat down and started to write again, now, after all this time? Would I just be following suit of my friends, just begging to feel manumitted? Grappling for the sentiment I thought that they felt, that I thought I would feel? No, writing was more than that, it always had been. It was truly something I enjoyed doing, craved and caved to, and for a person who struggled to accept guidance and assistance, I needed it - it forced me to get it out and rummage through it. Disorganise only to reorganise.
But really the only person to blame for my lack of creativity was myself. I hadn’t made space in my life to just sit and write. To realise it’s not a novelty, it’s necessity. It’s not just some desperate pursuit for melancholy. There’s got to be something raw in my life, I need some perturbation. Something that isn’t controlled, black and white, fast, objective and argumentative. Something that isn’t like all the rest of the things I do. The case submissions, the formal emails, calorie counting, court documents, familial pillaring, runs and endless skipping – the slotted times to be social, the limits on fun, drugs and the small allowance for wasted time or weakness; two words that I interpreted to be interchangeable. Sure, there was the beach; a simple, frequent and unnegotiable element – a power walk, a dip and a short sit on the sand, for an hour, to be home ready for a shower and coffee and straight to work. What a cliché.
But I’m back, I think. I need it so badly. Some kind of creative expression just to know there’s more than this marble concretion. Something authentic and reflective. It’s time to nurture the intrinsic behind the extrinsic.
