My Words are Stuck

In this time of “finding myself” (better known as figuring my crap out) I’ve finally given myself permission to get back to writing; my first love and the thing I abandoned in a fit of low self esteem. So now, here I sit at my makeshift desk in my makeshift writing room and I’m using that room as god intended. I am “Writing” with a capital W because I am now calling myself a “Writer”.

But it’s not the writing I remember. It’s not the free flowing stream of eloquent creativity it once was. In fact, it feels like my brain has gone completely numb. I have found myself the writing equivalent of trying to zip your jacket half way through a walk on a January day in Minnesota when you forgot your mittens. You can feel the pressure of the zipper on your deadened fingers but you can’t actually feel its teeth. Your hands know the motions and try desperately to do the simple task, but your knuckles creak in frozen protest, willing yet completely unable to follow your brains directions.

That is me, sitting here, trying to write something. Anything. I can feel the pressure of the words pushing in the front of my face right behind the bridge of my nose. They’re there wanting so badly to get out but they simply won’t cooperate. In my head I’ve written so many glorious things: Witty blog posts, scathing political commentary, tear inducing dramatic scenes and picture perfect character sketches. Yet now that I am sitting down in front of my computer giving my words the green light to come out in the open they swirl, uncatchable, in a maddening tornado. Occasionally an interesting phrase brushes the surface. Hesitantly, it travels down almost to my fingers poised expectantly on the keyboard. Then skittish, it retreats back to the tempest. Rinse. Repeat.

Eventually a coarse sentence plops out unceremoniously onto the screen and it is so far from what my brain envisioned it’s laughable. There is no grace to the words, no wisdom, no style or charisma. It’s just a string of words. Clumsy, irritatingly banal words.

Then suddenly, I’m startled by the cries of my youngest as he wakes from his nap and I realize that somehow 2 hours has passed. I had been completely immersed the entire time I fought my words, never bored, never idle. In fact, after 2 hours of feeling as clumsy and irritatingly banal as my words I am refreshed, feeling light and free. I close out of my work and even though it’s nothing like what I wanted it to be I am utterly and wholly satisfied.