So, for the first time in weeks, I actually get to type this post in the morning. (It may be 11:30 but it is still morning.) I am frustrated with the fact that I am stuck in my creative work. I did the poem-a-day challenge last month. Because of depression and other issues, I found myself writing a week's worth of poems once a week. I am disappointed because I used to write multiple poems a day. Writing one poem a day for a week wasn't a big deal. I wrote prolifically before the bipolar and my c-ptsd got worse. Now, I spend my assigned time for writing avoiding it because what goes down on paper hurts.
I thought that doing a morning blog for fifteen minutes would work better. I tend to type faster than I write by hand. (And I am less likely to get writer's cramp this way, which isn't a bad thing.) I am still encountering the painful themes. A part of me says I should get to work on something else because I'm wasting my time writing this post. I have another part of me that says no time spent writing is wasted. No writing is worthless. It is the process that matters. The end result is going to be what ever it is going to be despite my efforts. It is like growing a plant. You throw the seed in the dirt and then do the work of watering and weeding. The seed grows on its own and you just witness the process.
I just am afraid of what fruit these seeds are going to bear. I have people that this project will discuss and I hide their names but I know if they happen on to the post that discuss their actions they're going to know it is themselves I am talking about. It's dangerous ground to be working on. I know that some of them have threatened me in the past for just keeping a private journal that discussed anything about their behavior towards me. At the same time, there is the emotional trauma of having my journal used against me in court with things I had written blown out of proportion and taken out of context in an attempt to put a feather in the cap of an ambitious person at the expense of the happiness of my family. (That situation eventually ended out well, but it was traumatic for pretty much the entire family. I almost gave up writing after that experience.)
I am struggling to write because there is so much pain there. I am struggling to make art because there is equally great amounts of pain there that I just don't know how to process. In the midst of it all, I am trying to juggle the 'real world' issues of managing my household, raising my children, and generally staying on top of my chronic health issues. I feel like I am past my prime and that there is no hope for me. I know this is my depression speaking. It is a terrible feeling. Having the repeated echo of a well intentioned therapist telling me that I shouldn't be so focused on my writing if it is painful and that I have time to just not write and that I should focus on other things if writing isn't making me happy in my ears is like trying to work as someone is whispering to me how bad everything is.
I try not to think about it. I am going to start a 'burn' book where I write down these things and literally put them aside when I sit down to work. It's kind of like the brain dump from the bullet journal system except this is a brain dump where you write down all of the awful things rattling around in your head that are distracting you from your task. I may literally burn that book when it is filled. I haven't decided. But, maybe the act of physically putting it down on paper may work to make it get out of my head long enough so that I can do things like finish editing book four and get it up for purchase.
I don't know why the one therapist is the one that I focused on. Perhaps because their comment came in the midst of that year of hell where things were traumatic and difficult for my family. Perhaps because it came at a vulnerable moment and it was just like the comments that [redacted] made about my writing. I don't know.
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