Back to Basics. And Hello.
It feels like I'm starting all over (again)
Ten minutes. I’m setting the timer for ten minutes, so that I can write this to you.
I don’t know how to tell you what’s happened the last few years, and if I start to write about a piece of it, I tend to get paralyzed and freeze. Not actually paralyzed, but something happens in my body and things shut down and then I’m frantically cleaning out the bottom of the fridge and re-organizing the socks in my drawer, and the therapists I know call this “anxiety” and “functional freeze” and “flashbacks” and all I know is that there is a lot of grime that’s collected on the glass shelves in this fridge. And so I am scrubbing, SCRUBBING, I am digging the dirt off with my fingernails and the surface is CLEAN.
And I feel an overwhelming, pressing sense of exhaustion that is hard to untangle.
Have I always been this tired? What is making me so tired all the time? Ugh, don’t answer that. I know the answers. More on that later.
For now, life feels like a set of building blocks, and I feel like I’m back at the beginning of the video game. I’m starting again, as we do, and I’m trying to figure out how to write. It’s weird to write when I feel like I’ve lost my voice; stranger, still, to write after the year that I lost my mind.
Did I lose my mind? That’s a tough one to describe. I’ll tell you about it, I hope, when I have a chance to write a bit more.
It feels like I’m waking up after a brain injury. Again, I’ll have to tell you more about that when I can try to wrap my fingers around it. Telling these stories feels like a strange, slippery business. Some of the words I use are just not quite right. And sometimes I don’t believe myself when I describe what’s going on.
And, candidly, I’m still a bit scared.
As I pick up the pieces, I’m reminded of the phrase, “Chop wood, carry water.” It comes from the well-known Zen saying: “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” No matter where we are in life, we all come back to the same basics.
This is how it feels to be writing again, after falling out of a regular practice. I’ll set a timer for ten minutes. I’ll tell you a little bit about what’s going on. It won’t feel like much at the time—it’ll be carrying another load of water, cleaning another round of laundry, running another round of dishes.
The timer just went off.
I’ll write a more again. Soon.
PS: I’m starting a small writing group. I want to have some built-in accountability for my own personal writing, and also, I find being in groups of people to be very helpful right now. Reminds me that we’re all in this, chopping wood and carrying water. Here’s the link if you’re curious to learn more about Writing Club and want to join me.
