When A Writer Can't Write

This week I've been slowing fading away into a depressive state, this is not uncommon for me but the slow progression into depression is. Usually it's a hard fall, quick, painful. More of a plunge really, taken after I've fought to hold the monsters at bay. In the end their stamina is a lot greater than mine. However, this week has been a long drawn out battle. I've fought at every turn to keep my head above water but I had my slips. Other parts of my life have suffered so my mind could remain on the edge of control.

Like my work (freelance stuff), Monday I made a lot of headway but then that stopped. Progress slowed on Tuesday when I moved away from commissioned projects and onto my own work, I tend to neglect my own projects for other peoples. Something the brings on my depression because my work often goes unfinished, which then leads me to feel like a failure. It's made even worse by the events of the last year of my life. This time last year I was falling apart.

Life is. . . I would say funny but that's not what I mean, so lets call it a wonder. A mysterious thing with twists, turns, loop-to-loops, water slides, and unfinished tracks. For someone like me who has lived in the more depraved natural world I see only shadows the majority of the time. The world is a dark, grimy, and sullen with awful energy but even I still have hope. It's the one thing I cling to, and June of last year I rested my whole well being on hope—on the thought of a future for the first time in my life.

I started medication for my anxiety and depression, I spent most of the spring out doors, something I never do. I enjoyed things, nature, people, in small doses but still. I felt—better, stronger. Slowly my victimized self started to lessen and I felt like the warrior I wanted to be, but then came life. Another twist, a loop I wasn't strapped in for. My body got sick and for the last year I've been battling my diagnoses of a chronic illness, along with the knowledge that everything I was taught growing up had lead me to worsen my condition. I'm killing myself, slowly.

Not that I mean to be doing it, but when a lifetime of bad habits pairs with mental illness, recovered memories, and an non-existent sense of self-worth. Well, everything falls to chaos. That's where I currently am. A lost child among chaos.

Can't I get a damn break?

That's what I think right now. I moved past denial of being ill, of having this other problem piled on my mountain and am firmly in the anger zone. I'm pissed at my mom for never giving a damn or ever caring enough to get me properly checked out. I could have been getting treatment for years and have this firmly under control. Instead, when I brought her my concerns about problems that I found out are symptoms of my chronic illness, she brushed them off. So here I am, 33 and feeling like the world has it out for me. It feels like nothing is easy for me, not ever.

I hate my small moments of happiness last year because in my warped way of pairing things my mind tells me this awfulness I've been swallowed into is all because of my happy time. It's the price to be paid to keep the shitty universal balance. I know that is messed up irrational thinking, the universe is really out to fuck everyone. Not on purpose but it's simply doing it's thing. Doesn't lessen the anger—doesn't take away the feeling of being disadvantage by the vast expanses of the universe. Nope, it all feels like a shit-storm right overhead.

The thing I'm struggling the most with is my passions. If you follow the definition of a passion I guess I really can't call them that at this moment. Depression does that to you, it kills your passion. It steels everything you love, sucks the joy right out of it. In some cases you deprive yourself of the things that bring you joy because you don't see the point, other times its a sick need to punished yourself. Then there are those haunted by the judgment of others for their pursuits, those nasty voices are all that can be heard when you try to enjoy yourself. I suffer from all of the above. There is always something holding me back and the messed up part, it's all in my head. I do it to myself.

I'm such a dick to myself, and as much as I want to be pissed off at myself about holding myself back that's not where I should be putting my anger.

The one thing that makes my blood boil—the one thing I often try not to focus on because it messes with my head even—is that this was done to me. . . People—a woman I thought loved me, did this to me—trained me to be this way. Forced it into me. Took a blank slate of a child and tormented them with verbal abuse until they had no self-worth left I was willing to clean a kitchen floor with my tongue just to watch a movie. (True event, I was 6-7).

Right now I'm sitting here hating myself because there is something I've been trying to do all week—a long standing passion of mine—I haven't been able to do for months. Not since I found out I was sick last year. Yeah, I do a little here and there but I see no end in sight for my lack of progress. I can't throw myself into the task like I once did. It holds no joy or escape for me anymore, there's too much judgment roaring up from Dani and old high school friends. My mind won't let me move forward, and I desperately need to move forward.

I haven't been able to write. I'm an author who hasn't release a book in over two years, and hasn't had a solid writing session in a year. Okay, I know what you're thinking. I write here don't I? I'm writing this blog, but this is venting. It's not storytelling, this is sharing. The worlds I used to love crafting, the characters I gushed over bringing to life, the blood rushing thrill of a new plot twist I don't feel any of it anymore. I'm numb to my own creative world. It holds no joy, instead it feels tedious and impossible.

The first time I knew I wanted to be a writer I was in the ninth grade. I always had a rich fantasy life, but it came out in play with dolls and toys. I thought up ideas but only for fun, it wasn't till an autumn day, a dream, and composition book came into my life that I started to form things into real ideas. When I wasn't writing out my very first story by hand in my notebook, a special composition book I inked all black and put random stickers on, then I was thinking about it. Playing out the next scene in my head, forming a new villain, a new task for the characters. Every second I could spare I was writing in that damn book, my friends often made fun of me but I didn't care.

Half way through the book I went to my mom and told her I found out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I wanted to be a writer. I was going to work really hard in English class (a weak subject of mine) and start working on my stories and rewriting them, I wanted to do this. More than any other idea I brought to her. Imagine the heartbreak I felt when she laughed at me.

Yes, my mother laughed at me.

Not because she thought being a writer was silly or anything like that, but because it was me wanting to become a writer. Me, the girl who was still reading at a fourth grade level and couldn't spell worth a damn. The child that struggled through anything written, me. I wanted be a writer, a girl who was always in the 'special' learning classes growing up because a lack of reading/writing skills.

It shattered me when she said no publisher would ever take me seriously, and after that my writing slowed down but didn't stop. Nope, I still wrote in my book. The wind might have been knocked out of my sails, but fuck it. I wanted to write, and even if it was only for me I was going to do just that.

I wrote for years until I reached the age of 17. By then my mom had forced friendships on me, you know, because having a kid that liked to sit home and write wasn't normal. I was forced out into the world and praised when I made friends, so that's what I did. My writing fell away because those so called friends often made fun of me for it. They laughed at my ideas, teased me about my stories, and generally poked fun. My mother right along with them. Dani often mocked my creative mind, rolled her eyes at it and called me 'different' or artsy fartsy. I hate that phrase.

By 19 I was so far into the worst years of my life that my creative life halted to a stop. Writing was painful, and cruel because all I heard were people's judgment of my ideas. They wanted me to be crafty, expressive, but also to reign in my creativeness. It was a maddening time that has stuck with me. I tend to censor myself a great deal because I don't want to offend or upset anyone. My creative is on a leash, and right now it's wearing a choke collar.

Mid-twenties I started writing again, but just for me and maybe my husband. I was more into art. It's funny, I have a friend that tells me a lot authors write because they can't draw. Me, I draw because I always thought I couldn't write.

Truth is, I can write. According to my limited number of fans and small group of supporters, I do it well. I guess, because I always feel I'm at a disadvantage. Most if not all writers/authors feel their work sucks at some point, I feel it to the tenth degree. What with Dani's memory still laughing and me and my lack of grammar and spelling abilities.

In 2014 I self-published my first book, a novella to wet my feet. By 2016 I was putting out my first full length novel that actually won #1 mystery in a contest, and yet here I am. Unable to write more than two lines before I hear my mother's laughter, the demon she put inside my head telling me how much I suck. I hear her judging words from years later when I told her I was going to try and publish a book, the way she questioned me with skepticism. Her lack of belief in me, and I reflect that onto myself. I replay the pokes my friends made about my wild characters, how my brother and sister laughed at me for coming up with talking animals and my need to be successful becomes too much. I crumble under the weight of it all.

I look back over the last year of my life and see all my failed deadlines, my plans all gone because my body wanted to do it's own thing. I watch as my fan base dwindles away and think to myself, “what's the point. It's like I'll be starting all over again.” I see years of work slipping through my fingers, and I watch as authors I had the honor of debuting with pushing themselves forward toward success, while I'm just here. Back sliding into nothingness.

It makes it hard to open my files and work, I judge every word, every sentence. Which is maddening. Every writer does that at some point in their manuscript, but doing it every single time. . . It's exhausting. I look at my worlds, my vivid places and shrug. “What's the point. . . I've failed just like my mom said I would.” I have no money, literally. I can't work because I get panic attacks and start to feel even more worthless. I feel so little self-worth that I'm uncomfortable charging my freelance clients what I should for my very hard work, and I keep thinking to myself, “even if I do finish a book I can't afford an editor. I have no budget for that or marketing because I've spent it all getting to the place I was before I found out I was sick.” So what does that leave me with? Why put in the work if it's going to go nowhere? Why waste my precious energy when I have so little of it to get through the day?

I hate this—I hate it all. I want to be able to escape back into my fantasy worlds, but depression—my mother—people I used to call my friends, have taken it away from me. I have nothing left but my suffering and the little joy I feel from day to day, which dwindles when I focus on my illness and my lack of ability to make a living. I'm so tired. . . I'm depleted.

Most days—days like this—weeks like this, I just don't have it in me anymore. My past has taken almost everything I've ever loved, and I want it back but I'm too tired to fight for it. So then what. . . what am I suppose to do?

I guess when I find that answer things will start getting better. Until then, fuck knows.

#Struggling #AuthorProblems #Selfworth #WorldInChaos

~JAX~