Sunday, November 8, 2020

On Not Writing

I mourn the days when I had to write every thought, every idea, every interesting thing that ever happened. I couldn't sleep without writing it. I couldn't let go. 

I used to have an impeccably detailed memory. Writing helped me with forgetting. Remembering everything that ever happened is not really a good thing. Memories are ghosts that haunt you if you can't forgot, can't move on. 

Now I'm learning not to write down everything and to forget them too. I supposed its my new stage of maturity. 

Letting go of writing is like letting go of my identity. It used to be the most important thing in the world. But now, I suppose its not.

The world moves on. Ideas come and go. I can think, dream, make up stories as I go along without having to record everything, without this need of a captains log. 

Writing everything down can be so damaging to myself and to others. There is a certain rigidity that comes with writing, like saying this thought is now permanent. It has been sealed on paper.

Memories, at least, can change.

Learning not to write everything down is like learning forgiveness. letting the past just disappear as if it never happened; not having to to record everything someone said so you can use it against them later on. You can just live in the moment.

How unlike the identity I have worked so hard to build for myself all those years. But its our identities that bind us to the ego, that prevents us from transforming into something new, if that's what life demands.

Then it doesn't matter what life demands. Who are we to assume we know what life demands, what God demands., what humanity is and what it isn't?

I used to think I had to always write. Van Gogh once said, "if you hear a voice in you that says you cannot paint, then by all means paint, and that voice will be silent." He also said something about striking when the iron is hot because there will be other days devoid of inspiration, when you find it hard to get out of bed. 

Van Gogh sold only one of his brilliant paintings and died unsuccessful and unhappy. How could no one see his brilliance? I saw his paintings and read his letters when I was a young teen and immediately fell in love with him. I could relate to his struggles, his passion and his inability to adapt to reality.

I was so afraid of not being a writer. I struck when the iron was hot, not because I was taking advantage of my manic moments but because it was the only thing that rescued me from drowning in my own misery. Then it became my identity. If I wasn't a writer, then what else was there? I was afraid of what was beyond that.

Sometimes, when I'm alone, I miss that restless writer in me, always reaching for an idea or fantasy. I miss the feeling of insanity, of drowning in my subconscious. In a way its a good thing that I've learned to cope with reality better without having to go there. I still eat chocolate though. That helps too.

I wrote this for me but I figured I'd share for anyone still willing to be a voyeur.

Sorry, I've been in a dry spell for so long but I don't want to sell out. Once I have made enough money, I plan to drown in my creativity again. Then again, maybe choosing a hiatus from writing may lead me to something altogether different. Losing myself is scary. Maybe I'll find someone else at the end of all of this, or maybe I'll find a way to come back to Lacey Reah, being more confident of who she always was.

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some day
into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him the knew--
Only more sure of all I though was true.

--Robert Frost

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