Some days I feel crazy, like the words are eating me from the inside out.
I haven’t written in a few days, haven’t had even a spare minute to grab the computer. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing. I just haven’t gotten the words down on screen/paper. The words don’t stop. They don’t go silent just because the blog does.
Some days the sentences seem to form themselves. I’m having a normal experience, a hike with Guy, for example. I might even carry on a normal conversation. Meanwhile, internally, my brain composes its own narrative.
Too many days like that, without writing, and I begin to go nuts.
Today I woke up rested, ready to run. Instead, I grabbed coffee and a book, content to enjoy a day off. Guy pulled boxes from the rafters, more than enough to decorate our small home for Christmas. He pulled the nostalgia boxes, sorting through old pictures and our love letters, stuff from when our teens were babies; he interrupted my reading with memories. I should have participated, indulging my heart each long-forgotten missive (how did I make my handwriting so small?) or the figurines from Teen’s 1st birthday cake (we meant to buy each number in the set, and yet we have only 1 and 2). My head felt too full to participate. I couldn’t even take in the words in my novel, reading and rereading paragraphs.
I made a simple lunch and, a few bites in, it looked funny, smelled off, tasted…like I might vomit. Teen looked, smelled, tasted, and devoured, thanking his good fortune he had walked through the room at just the right moment—my work, his gain.
Starting to feel downright grumpy, I grabbed a full, clean laundry basket. As I folded and stacked, I heard the words banging away in my crowded brain. “You can’t eat,” they explained, “because you are already full. Full up on words. Vomit the words, pour us out, and you’ll be free to eat.”
Yuck! Only, now I can’t. The words have become gobbledy-gook, gibberish. I’m no longer sure what they have been trying to say, because they’re no longer saying it. What felt effortless now feels insurmountable. To go back, to recreate the narratives, oh my… But to have lost those words, making real those thoughts, feelings, experiences, feels much worse. I will have to try.
The words fight me either way. They fight to get out//they fight my attempts to arrange them again when I haven’t immediately complied. Demanding, slave-driving words. Blessed, precious taskmasters.
