You guys, I wrote something. I wrote the beginning, middle, and end of something, and it's done. It's complete. What I wrote is not a spectacular article for you to laugh/cry at, so it did not have a deadline. In fact, I could never touch that file again and it would be just fine. The point is not what I wrote, but the fact that I wrote at all.
Writer's Block is real as hell, my friends, and it's kicking my butt
It turns out, depression and the old WB go hand in hand for me. So, naturally, when the idle days of summer set in and I was given time to ponder the uncertainty of the future, I hit a huge wall. As irony would have it –and of course irony would– the moment I stopped writing coherent sentences was the moment I was given a million things to write about.
Everything's changing right now. I'm in a very transitional place these days, and I'm constantly being reminded that everything is fleeting. Recently I've been challenged to trust that everything happens for a reason, trust that everything will be okay, and trust myself and my strength. I've spent so much time thinking. I've spent a remarkable amount of time outside (for me, that is - I'm an indoor child). I've left town four times, two of which out of the state. I've had adventures and laughs and firsts and fights and I'm laying on a stack of stories just waiting to be written. But I just couldn't.
I don't know how to describe writer's block without understating it. I could say, "I have thirty thousand stories to tell, but I just don't know how to phrase them," and I would know what I meant, but if someone has never experienced this feeling I'd imagine that complaint would sound trivial, minor. Meanwhile, I'm over here wallowing in the heavy shame of missing another deadline and letting myself (and my editors*) down, and it sucks. The same goes for depression, actually. I could say, "I'm not sad about anything in particular. I simply can't find the motivation I need to get out of bed," but if you've never dealt with depression, a. mazel tov, wow, and b. that claim may not seem as big as it does from the inside. I have to learn how to describe it in a way that makes people want to help rather than judge. I hope what I said will suffice for now.
The point is that I've been drowning in a depression downpour and I couldn't write a word about it until tonight at 12:41 a.m. when I finally found my voice again. And now I've written this discursive, yet hopeful article that I hope will inspire you to push through anything that may be holding you back right now. If I can write at 3 a.m. after hiding from my laptop for two months, you can get through anything.
*Odyssey, simply because it would be well within reason. Thank you for granting me the space and support I needed to struggle through this.
