I haven't written in a while, which is funny, because I thought college was going to be the place where I finally began writing. Since, you know, that's my major and all. But no, ever since I got here, I've been like a dried-up well. The words don't come to me anymore. I have a fiction class, where I'm assigned writing, where I'm graded on the material I produce.
And I find myself, for the first time ever, with nothing to say. The little tidbits I produce are stilted and forced and dry and even I, their author, can't bear to read them without getting bored. What happened to the bright-eyed poet whose high school English teacher thought she had so much potential- real, genuine potential?
I don't tell people what she said about me. It was the best compliment I have ever received in my entire life, it is the best compliment I will ever receive in my entire life, but I can't tell anybody that because I'll sound like I'm full of myself. And maybe I am. I try not to be, I try. I have never been a person with a great deal of confidence or a high self-esteem. I have been chastised for my low sense of self-worth. So finally, it felt good, to be proud, to have a superlative attached to my name. It felt good to walk around with that knowledge sitting on my shoulders. So maybe that's why I feel so inadequate now. Maybe I got too big of a head. Maybe I let the compliment get to me.
Is God taking this away from me? I feel that He has taken so much. He has put me through so much. I don't want to pity myself, but. I have been humbled over and over again and yet, still, there is more pride in me, and God wants to tear away the foundation of it that I have built my life on. Everything I love, I want, I am good at, is stripped away. I have struggled with health problems, anxiety, issues of lust and sexuality. My relationships and my personal well-being have all been rocked to the core. And now, my mind. Is he going to take that from me too?
I find myself tired.
I don't want to write. I don't want to try. I find that I am constantly going, going, running, running, and I am tired. I need time to myself, time to rest and recharge and revitalize. I need to be alone, to write, and to think, and to pray. But I have no sense of priority. I give give give and run run run and talk talk talk till I am sick to death of the sound of my own voice. I no longer live in my head, I live in the world. I remember watching a television show where they talked about this woman, who was a writer, and how people thought she was weird because she was always in her own head and it made her a hard person to have a relationship with, and at the time I thought, I'm not like that, I never want to be like that. But I am like that. I don't think it's possible to be a writer and not be like that. People demand my attention and I give it to them and in that giving, I sacrifice my art. I am giving of myself to people instead of writing, which sounds healthy, maybe it is, but it is destroying my craft and I feel useless and annoyed.
I just want to write again. I need to be dark and alone and full of want again, in order to write again.
But I am distracted. Distractions abound and I cannot escape them.
I am at the doctors, at the bank, at the gym. I am cleaning, I am at the boys' dorm, I am doing laundry, I am listening to my roommate, I am skyping, I am texting, I am doing my homework, I am sitting in class, I am eating a meal, I am getting coffee, playing ping pong, keeping up correspondence, I am talking to my counselor, I am everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
Even now, I am being begged, being watched and pulled to come away, come away from yourself and be with me.
It is nice to be wanted but I want myself back. I don't want to be distracted anymore. I don't want to be pulled apart at the limbs.
And most of all, I don't want to spend all my days staring at you, thinking about you, and yet never, not once, even speaking to you.
