15 Jun 2008

!!!



Writing is like a psychotic boyfriend, now that I think about it. You know the type -your parents love him, your sisters adore him, your friends think he might be ‘The One’ for you. And none of them notice the way you walk hunched over all of a sudden to keep your heart from breaking, and the bruises that are the reason why you suddenly wear a lot of make-up.


Writing is a lot like that. Sometimes, when it’s good, it’s very good. But when it’s bad, it’s worse than anything you can imagine.


I haven’t been writing for sometime now. It’s like being in heroin withdrawal, with the added bonus that your drug of choice doesn’t work anymore. I still love writing. I still love the feel of a character or a story inside of me, waiting to come to life. I imagine that that’s what being pregnant must feel like.


I just can’t do it anymore. I am filled with ideas, pregnant with them…but when the time comes to put them on a page, I just can’t do it. I write perhaps two pages and think to myself ‘what utter shit. Nobody will ever read this!’ and it’s true. Because somehow, somewhere, I seem to have lost the confidence in myself that made it possible, even when I despised myself and wanted to die, to write and get myself out of there. Writing was my lifeline back then, lifting me out of myself and taking me to places where I could be whoever I wanted to be, do anything I wanted to do. And it doesn’t work anymore.


Because since this thing happened to me - this thing that turned my art against me - writing has been my pain. Not my drug against the agony of life, but the cause of it. And that’s never happened to me before.


And I still want it. That’s the worst part. Maybe I’m just too stubborn for my own good, unwilling to give up on the idea that I will be a writer, or maybe I’m meant to get through this and go on writing, someday even something worth reading.
And that’s why writing is like a psychotic boyfriend. You know he’s only going to hurt you. You know he’s bad.


You know that every time he says ‘it’ll never happen again,’ never is really only ‘until next time’ because it will happen again.


And you still go back.


Because despite what the world wants you to believe, there are more important things than being happy. And art is one of those things.

 
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