Time for me to Write, again.
Time for me to again find my Voice.
Not really sure where to begin, with this. As I anticipated, the things that have worked to inhibit me from blogging in the first place – namely doubt, lack of confidence, and that all too familiar fear of being judged – are taking their places in that audience in my head right now, ready and eager to start their boos and heckling. As I sit here my eyes are scanning over the words I just wrote, seeking out flaws, feeding the hungry inner critics that reside within my mind. They’re all poised and ready, now – ready to judge, ready to knock me down and smash the flimsy fragments of my fragile confidence, to unretrievable, tiny shards. Ready to cause me to once again do the thing that always follows my every desperate attempt to write. To close my laptop with a frustrated snap, push it away from me. Let one single tear fall upon the ribbed black cover, as I do so. A tear born from a awareness of defeat.
Im rereading and criticising every single syllable that I just wrote, there. But this time Im not quitting the stage. Im looking that scornful audience in the eye. Doubt sneers back at me, fear leers like a grotesque jester, mocking me, trying to make me feel small. Stand down, Em. It’s past time for you to stand down!
Another tear falls as I write. Not with anguish this time. It’s a tear for what I might have lost, alot of: but which has not completely died.
Amidst the cold and the harshness
Upon the bare branches something beautiful may blossom, again..
Its true alot has changed. I believe I have lost alot of my skill, if you could have ever called it that, for writing. I never believed that I had that much in the first place – despite being praised, back in my younger days, at school, for my descriptive essays, and despite of course going to Trinity College to study English. Despite my former love of writing, making a start on my own novel, and not being physically able to go out the door without bringing one of my many notebooks with me, and a camera for taking pictures, for my blog. Ah, yes, my blog. for me, an untilmate sumbol for my love of writing. My blog symbolised for me, the residing of two powerful passions of mine in the midst of a serious eating disorder: baking, for one thing, and of course, more implicitly, writing, itself. And for years it remained that way – through the storms, through the landslides; the soaring highs and the plummeting lows. My blog was there for me – through all of that. It was the lighthouse, shining a beam of light throuigh the stormy night; the sheltered hollow on the slippery slope, into which I could retreat and take sanctuary from the cold. My blog was all of this to me, and more. It symbolised hope, and strength, and resilience; it reminded me, when the clouds gathered thick and i could not see through the driving rain, what it was I actually was really fighting for, what I had to keep on pushing towards. It reminded me of whao i was – the real Emmy. Who I wanted to be. Writing here became a key mode of expression, for me. it was here where I would channel the emotions, the feelings that were too painful or difficult for me to put into speech. And, having transcribed the pain, the frustration, the fear and the hurt I felt, out onto paper, I would attempt to make some sort of sense of them. Writing had become, for me, an integral part of my recovery.
But it seemed like ED is intent on taking every last scrap of everything that ever meant anything to me.
Many years ago, when I first became sick, it was my body which initially seemed to occupy ed’s core focus in its bid to callously distort, weaken and destroy. My mind and brain, from a cognitive point of view anyway, seemed at first mercifully unaffected by Ed’s taint. Not content, however, with the devastating physical impact it had wrecked upon my body, Ed began to turn its attention to the psychological and cognitive facets over which it knew it could have some sort of control. And just like the physical effects, the process was slow and gradual. At first, I didnt really understand what was going on: why I was suddenly crying over my lecture notes which made as much sense to me as a book written in double Dutch would; why I suddenly could not write a single sentence of my novel in the space of 30 minutes; whereas once, back in some other distant time, I could have written a whole page. Why? I used to scream to myself in anguish. Why? What’s happened to me? How did I suddenly…just…become…so dumb???
And by the time I realised what it was that was actually causing this, it was much too late to do a simple u turn, and go back.
Slowly, slowly and painfully, I teetered from the path towards destruction and ruin; onto a wholly different, but equally difficult, road. The road of recovery. And gradually, with every tentative bite and onerous meal; with every gruelling day of grinding my teeth together and forcing myself to keep on eating, while the Voice screamed like a livid Fury in my head – my body slowly began to heal. Heal what it could after years of trauma and abuse. Heal, what actually still remained, to be healed. I learnt the hard way that you cannot always reclaim what has been lost.
If only I could just walk away
and leave you behind, ED; forever… 3
One thing though that I was confident would be restored, would be my former ability, to write. But to my horror and dismay, this did not seem to be the case. And instead of writing becoming easier – and more “natural” to me as it once had been – as I progressed further with my physical recovery, it seemed to become, on the contrary, even the more difficult, tedious, and frustrating. And there came a point, perhaps around January of this year, when I suddenly realised that I didnt want to try anymore. Not even with my beloved blog; not even with the journalling that I had up-kept throughout the strain-filled days of anorexia. Your ability has gone, Em, the voice of doubt and self-loathing mocked. You cannot write anymore. Youve become heavier and uglier and stupider besides. You – are – worthless!!!
I gave up. I gave up, and agreed with Ed that there was not one scrap of a writer within me.
But now Im looking my judges – the doubt, the self criticism, the perfectionism – straight in the eye. And this time I don’t back away from their glares, their scorn-filled jibes and jeers. Yes, its true. Im not the same girl as i was, 10, 9, 8 years ago. When I was the grade A student of her class, who could write page upon page of fluid composition. Im not even the same girl as I was in uni, who managed – somehow; God knows how I did it; but did it, I did – to write the 6000 word essays that enabled her to attain her college degree. Im not the same girl now. So much of what I had – just like that of my tenuous health which I allowed to become abused and neglected – has been lost; perhaps, forever. I cant write like that anymore. I allowed ED to take alot of that away from me; my former confidence with writng, my aptitudes as regards composing a piece.
But there is one thing left to me that not even ED in all his seeming omnipotence cannot touch.
That is my love, my passion, for writing. And I know – as long as that tiny flame still flickers within me; that tiny golden candle – I can write. I can write and I can reach out to others as I used to. I can write and tell my story. I can write and perhaps, some day, some where, inspire and touch the hearts of others.
And I know now that this is the Right Time. The….Write, time. The Time to Write.
I’ve refound my Voice.
