I feel a bit like Flick in “A Christmas Story” – tongue frozen to the pole, squealing because I can’t get unstuck. Unfortunately, squealing doesn’t do much to remove my tongue from the pole.
And it’s not as if I’m stuck in a bad way. Like I said in my last post, I am in a good (and boring) place. This is very different than being stuck in an anorexic mind rut and unable to get out. I feel stuck in a creative sense.
I can’t write, can’t draw, can’t paint. There are things I want and need to say, to get out on paper in one way or another, but they are behind a wall.
One of the things I have always feared about seeking mental health is losing my creativity. The link between creativity and “madness” is well researched. And so I’ve wondered if by lessening the effects of my abnormal brain chemistry, I’ve also lessened the effects of my creativity.
When I was truly sick, I could not stop writing. I drew everything. I was a creative force to be reckoned with.
And now? I’ve been out of treatment almost six months and I feel decidedly uncreative. I want to SCREAM I feel so uncreative. I want that creativity back. The ability to put a picture to an emotion, the ability to turn a phrase. I want to sit down and write and write and write and know that at the end of it I’ve done more than just describe what I did today. (Which, most days, involves amazon instant video and meals and snacks.)
I want it back. I want it so desperately that I am almost willing to entertain the idea of being “sick” again. Because “sick” = “creative”.
I know, logically, that it doesn’t. I know that I have more potential for creativity when I’m well, when all the neurons are firing, when my brain isn’t constantly under siege from malnutrition or moods.
I know that my eating disorder wasn’t the most exciting thing about me. I know.
I just feel so damned boring being well.
