With one or two exceptions, all the best writing I have done in the past ten years has come from a place of pain. My most inspired, poignant pieces – “An Open Letter to Suicide,” “Stardust,” all the way back to a sixth-grade poem about my childhood home’s foreclosure, were inspired by suffering, heartache, or loneliness. I’ve never been a consistent writer: I write in a brief week- or month-long spurts of inspiration, writing my way through thoughts and environments I can’t cope with any other way. This is so true that when I was assigned a special tutor in fifth grade to develop my poetry skills, my ‘prodigy training’ lasted hardly a week - I refused to ‘just write.’ Why write if I had nothing to say? Suffice it to say, writing has never had an overbearing presence in my life; like a trusting parent, it’s only there when I needed it to be.

When I got to college, I knew I had Odyssey deadlines hanging over my head, aware that I was expected to churn out an article and come up with anything at all to write about. The bad news was: I had nothing worth writing about.

It’s not that I didn’t have ideas. I came up with things here and there – things that would have been decent articles, gotten a few likes, maybe a share. However, I didn’t want to write just to write. I don’t believe in that kind of writing. Ever since middle school language arts, whenever I have written something, I have written with purpose; I have written to say something new, to have an impact. Previous works of mine have inspired people; previous works have, maybe, changed people’s lives. So…Top ten things you’ll learn when you come back to college? Why I love crop tops? Those things just wouldn’t quite cut it for me. So, I waited around to be inspired to write something greater.

For weeks, I toyed with the idea of writing about recovery. That’s what was inhibiting my writing: my outstanding recovery from mental illness. Through my mom’s cancer diagnosis, through a busy and harrowing summer, through a crazy transition back to college, I had remained steadily in remission, coping with symptoms and self-monitoring dark thoughts. I’d been doing incredibly well – and I’d never had to write about that before.

It’s the best kind of writer’s block I could have asked for. I didn’t have anything good enough to write about because everything in my life was so good. The tide of suffering that elevated my pieces to viral status a year ago had been subdued to a trickle, and I didn’t need writing to give me something to live for, to pour my heart into, anymore. My trusting parent was hovering on the surface, waiting to provide caregiving that, as weeks of college rode by and the smile on my face stayed put, was never needed.

I was aware of writing. I was aware it was waiting for me to come back, to build a new relationship with it as the woman I had become – but I was scared to. Writing as a sufferer – as a warrior – as someone from the trenches – that was easy. Being an advocate for my fellow soldiers, nursing wounded in the same battlefield I was trapped in – that came naturally. But being a survivor? Being a mentor? Having the grave responsibility of being okay? That, I didn’t know how to do.

So, I took a break. I took the time to work on adapting to the lifestyle of remission and the lulling waves of recovery; learned how to adjust my fancy new life raft when the waves got rough, learned how to relax when the sun shined down and just roll with the waves. I learned who I was without tangible suffering. I learned how to live with a chronic illness, whereas before, I’d only known how to die from one.

I’m by no means fixed, perfect, or ‘better’ than I was before. I still have struggles, bad days, bad thoughts once in a while. The unknown territory I am treading – where social events happen on the fly and classes don’t cause crippling anxiety, where laughs come easily and sleep is peaceful – is nerve-wracking in its own right because it’s so new to me. However, I capture in my mind at least one or two moments a day where I recognize my life has changed for the better. Something new, different, happy – something that’s recovery. It could be something as simple as making my bed for the twelfth day in a row, or something as complex as noticing how comfortable I feel being myself in a lounge full of people, wondering when the heck I learned to be so chill. Those discoveries take some focus; I had to put writing to the side so I could become used to being someone new.

I have a new identity as a writer, and I’ll start writing more and more often, about some old ideas and some new discoveries. Certainly, the pain will not be over; there will be more stories of woe and hope in the future. However, there will be some happy stories, too – more than I ever could have mustered before.

I’m glad I got a months-long case of writer’s block. It’s supposed to be a bad thing, but for me, it was a symbol; a glowing neon sign that read, “This is ‘The After.’” The story will continue, but once in a while, every main character needs a blank page – a gap in the timeline – a blank inch at the bottom of a long paragraph. And, now that I’ve had that, I think I’m finally ready to start the next chapter.