I’m finding it incredibly difficult to write at the moment. Partially written posts are stacking up behind the scenes. Tentative introductions, and just as they start to take shape I abandon them through distraction, avoidance, uncertainty – I don’t know. I’m lacking focus and direction. Things are happening and changing but with such subtlety I’m yet to grasp what they are. Incapable of translating it into any communicative form – I find myself sitting with thoughts, emotions, physical sensations – without any desire to create meaning. Nothing I’m going through wants to be shaped into a story.
A fear that has come into view over recent sittings is that in pursuing this path, I may lose my creativity. My need to write is diminishing. Perhaps its always been my personal therapy, and as I delve deeper into yoga and meditation, it feels almost contradictory to write what was, or what I want to be. Writing is always going to take you away from the moment. Something as basic as pinning words onto how you feel, takes that feeling away. You are no longer experiencing, but describing. You move from the body into the head. And it is those voices in my head, that I am working towards silencing.
Even in my diary, the words are sparse and lack color and vibrancy. Instead I draw. Nothing special, I’m not an artist, just shapes and lines. I like to draw people’s faces, and windows containing different views. I don’t have to think, or try to do anything – but there is always a shape. Always a depiction of something.
This particular fear is often followed by some grief and disappointment over the unfinished work of “First We Play Music”. It was a story that I felt for many years needed to be written. There was a purpose to it, a passionate belief that goodness would come of it, and I can’t help but feel that I have let people down, that I have let myself down. And yet turning back, and reliving all of that doesn’t resonate with me anymore. Even the thought of editing and corrections, listening to feedback and tweaking and improving something that has already been written turns me off the whole process. Its going back, and I don’t want to go back anymore.
It may be that I have to just let it go for a while, without too much thought or emotion. I’ve been undergoing such a dramatic transformation on so many levels, that perhaps that part of me needs to rest and repair too. A lot of it is to do with expectation. Since I was a child I’ve perceived myself as a writer. As have my mum, my teachers, my lecturers, my friends. I’ve always been encouraged to write, and my only lifelong dream has been to get a book published. Not for fame, or critical acclaim, or recognition, just simply to tell a story.
What if it’s just not in me? What if it is the addictions, toxicity, and trauma that fuels me creatively?
My greatest comfort comes from an increasing sense that there are no choices. It was something that was raised in the month-long intensive with Matthew, and at that time the concept was totally beyond me. I was processing so many things that I just couldn’t take it on with any real consideration. But obviously, it wedged itself into my consciousness, because over these past few months snippets and remnants of that particular conversation are coming to the surface. It appears in conversation with random people, and gets highlighted in recent passages from books I’ve been drawn to.
It’s this whole concept of surrender.
I think it goes against everything I’ve ever believed and ever known. It raises so many arguments within myself that I daren’t ponder over it, rather just let this sense of whatever it is unfold. I haven’t even discussed it with anyone, but gradually, over time, it’s becoming something that I’m steering towards, and opening up to.
I sometimes wish that I could sit with Matthew for an hour or two and listen to him say it all again. See how it resonates with me now, after all this time has passed.
I can’t articulate it at this point, because I don’t want to use words, or fall back on what is predefined. For the first time in my life I’m letting this innate sense guide me. And I do feel patient, and I don’t feel defensive or afraid. There aren’t many why’s, who’s or what’s demanding identification – I just feel that I will understand what it all means when I’m ready.
I’m not sure why that comforts me with my writing. But I’ve had fleeting moments of a kind of hazy clarity that direct me towards writing something entirely different, from a place I don’t yet know or understand. There’s no point in forcing anything, or trying to be something that I’m not in this moment.
I’m growing to accept that right now I’m in waiting. There’s a reason for this prolonged pause. I’m beginning to have faith in that, and I won’t fight against it anymore.
