It’s been two weeks already since my last article. Why I am having such difficult time writing is the one question I keep asking myself. Blogging is not really a new thing for me; I look at it like journal writing online, except you have rules and social norms to follow since other people can read what you’re writing. I’ve been into writing ever since I left from high school. It was one of my many means of coping with the stress of college. Okay not only college, but life in general, and looking back, I’ve realized some things— things that sort of explain why I have been so uninspired in the past few weeks.
One of it is it’s easy for me to write when I am sad when I feel something emotionally.
Cross out the ‘sad’ part because sadness is just one emotion out of many other effective ones that have also unleashed the writer within me at some point in time. What I mean to feel “something” emotionally is as broad as the emotional equivalent of being punched in the gut to a paper cut realization. Just like the presence of any physical pain, a bit of blood shed is necessary for a person to feel something, at least that’s how it is for me.
Maybe that’s why most of the authors who birthed revolutionary literary pieces in history are those exact same people who have gone through their own hell on earth.
There are a few examples I could cite: Anne Frank in The Diary of a Young Girl, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and to mention more local pieces, Rizal’s El Filibusterismo.
Some of them didn’t really live to see their works becoming renowned. Some of them even died or were executed in the middle of hell’s dancefloor, but it doesn’t really take away the fact that their literary pieces shook the earth at least once.
It doesn’t only stop in literary pieces but it’s also seen in various forms of artwork. Van Gogh is probably the most famous of these examples. He is regarded as the epitome of the tortured artist [1].
The point is, pain, is one of the most effective pre-requisite for creative inspiration. Where pain isn’t involved doesn’t necessarily provide that almost heroin-like wake-up call. This might come out as a hefty speculation but most people cannot write while they are happy, because more often than not, they are too busy being happy.
I could at least say this from experience because most of my entries from my college diary were written during the times when I was at my worst. This makes it more obvious that I wasn’t exactly in my most optimal mental health during that period.
Exhibit A:
“September 23, 2016 1:24 AM
Do you ever feel like being inside a glass cage full of water? The water is so deep, is covered by bullet-proof tempered glass and you’re underneath it, all the while more water is being pumped into it. You try to keep yourself on the surface, mustering every bit of oxygen you can, but the water keeps coming and eventually you begin to choke in the air that you’re breathing. That is what I’m feeling right now. About everything. I’m tired trying to stay alive. I’m really tired na…
I’m sick of feeling bad all the time, for myself, for my friends, for my family, for my boyfriend… I don’t think I could ever be good enough.”
Wow so emo 🙄. This is a passage I wrote down almost exactly four years ago. I was at that time, in the middle of my third year in chemical engineering, dealing with a badly damaged self-esteem, body image issues, sleep deprivation, chronic anxiety and exhaustion, stress-induced trichotillomania and already a year in a not-so-healthy romantic relationship with my ex.
Reading back my entries, majority of them had similar themes. I wrote mostly about being constantly exhausted (which was true), either from chasing after class deadlines or from fighting with my ex. It’s as if I only write when I’m upset because of a fight or because of mediocre test results. My grades were still pretty great. On the other hand, I realized while looking back that the relationship I was in, was doomed as early as 2016, judging by the numerous depressing relationship-related entries which occupied majority of my paper space.
However, that roller-coaster ride prolonged for another 2 and a half years— WHAT? Yes. I know what you’re thinking. That was pretty stupid of me to allow an obviously failed relationship to continue like that. I’m not even kidding, it was stupid.
Prolonging an unhealthy relationship that long where it involves out-of-this-world ultimatums and suicide threats for 4-5 hour-long fights, is something I would never wish on anyone to go through, not even to my archenemies (I might take this back in the future. Lol.).
In my defense, I was young and naïve. People do a lot of silly things when they are young and naïve. However, aside from that, I also basically believed that I deserved that kind of love.
By the time the relationship was finally coming to a stop, I have already started drinking anxiety meds because the break-up happened in the middle of the most difficult period in the chemical engineering program– 5th year, where it involved:
- Family-related friction due to my delay in marching down the graduation aisle
- The stress of dealing with conceptual plant design and college thesis
- Extra-curricular stresses involving professors with incomprehensible personalities
Because of that experience, I think I have personally earned the right to be able to say that I am never, ever, going through that again, ever (THAT’S two ‘ever’s in one sentence, to make my emphasis clear as daylight). Don’t get me wrong, the strength I displayed all those years was amazing (way to go Roxanne!), to the point that I’m pretty much convinced that I have this extraordinary and almost supernatural ability to tolerate a lot of bullsh*t when it comes to relationships.
In fact, I have come up with the best metaphor to describe that scornful period in time after the demise of that relationship: Try imagining the surgical implantation of a cannonball inside your chest. You wake up one day and you just feel this heaviness in the middle of your chest cavity, crushing your heart, and making breathing an absolute chore. You can shrink it manually in your head over time, but obviously you won’t be able to do that if you are too busy walking around and carrying it while trying to meet your responsibilities as a 5th year chemical engineering college student 24/7.
Now do you understand what I mean about strong emotions bringing out the writer in me? I have obviously completely moved on from what happened, right? (Insert sarcasm right here)
The point is, I think there are two reasons why I have been having trouble writing all this time:
I am not in pain enough. I know from my previous rantings we've seen how passionate emotions can induce the creation of masterpiece but SO WHAT? We’re in the middle of a pandemic; we’re basically in each of our houses covered in layers of bubble wrap trying to survive. Should I induce pain to get myself going, maybe start a fist fight in the nearest emotionally radioactive areas of my life? Do something risky, like call a woman fat? Should I start a drama with my boyfriend? Should I do drugs?
Imagine if anyone took me seriously in the last paragraph. These would be such terribly bad examples of trying to induce a force of inspiration. I’m obviously just stating these examples for the sake of humor of course. Any form of self-induced pain or self-harm is definitely off the table. We’re done with that Roxanne. Remember what we said about being self-harm for the sake of recreation? It’s the same as selling one’s own kidneys for art supplies.I am way too distracted. Maybe I am in pain like everyone else. Since we are in the middle of a pandemic, it’s understandable that a bit of pain involved. But maybe my mind is just doing one of its survival mechanism things, you know? Looking for a distraction to make any sort of pain bearable? And maybe, just maybe, I have become too tolerant of pain to even notice its existence.
My newest distraction, or my new anesthetic these days, is my teaching job. October 5 is fast approaching, and I am honestly scared out of my wits if I will be able to pull this teaching job off. To destress from the anxiety of having classes resuming, I turn to Netflix. CBC’s Sherlock and You and occasional reading of Dostoevsky [2] and Le Couteur & Burreson’s writings [3] have been occupying my free time. So much time in fact, I’m sacrificing a lot of sleep and brain cells for these things, making me dread even starting any write up on Hive all the more.
So what are you going to do, Roxanne?
Keep writing even in the middle of the mundane, or better yet, keep writing ABOUT the mundane. I am not going to lie, talking about the everyday IS boring, but I think that’s just what I need, and to be more honest, I think that's what everyone needs.
Most people are so eager to escape reality so much that they are willing to pay billions to lose themselves in another person’s story or in another universe, may it be fictional or non-fictional, and may it be through another novel, or watching the newest movies or listening to the newest albums. People would do anything to give themselves a break from facing their everyday. There is nothing wrong with that of course. I’m as guilty as the person reading this too, but at what cost?
We sometimes forget to live in the now. We forget to be grateful for this life, and the boringness that comes with it. We forget to be thankful to our well-functioning organs that allow us to experience the universe we live in, while other people are in isolation rooms being connected to tubes just so they could fight for another day to breathe. We forget about the food in our tables, and the people we eat the food with, while some people around the world are still scavenging in the dumps for their next meal. We forget to notice the rain, or the clear sky. We forget about our stable jobs, about the beauty in waking up to the aroma of coffee in the morning and the responsibilities that make our lives worth living.
Well, I don’t know Rox, maybe we are just not that observant. Yes! Exactly, and that’s the problem. We all want to be somewhere else, and do something else. We are never satisfied and all want our lives to be extraordinary or contribute to the world in extraordinary ways. Maybe that’s the main reason why I haven’t been able to write anything, because of this underlying fear of my writings not being able to live up to this expectation.
But this is me at the end of September, making a statement in this post that I’m going to choose to write even if things I’m going through are not so extraordinary, not that blog-worthy, or not even worth mentioning. I will choose to look not that far for a topic in my next posts to come and actually start noticing things, to start observing whatever beauty that is overlooked, in the mundane that I am facing right now, and who knows? I might end up having to write about all the ridiculously innovative face masks I’ve come across in this pandemic. 😉
Cited Literature:
[1] Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia, Tortured Artist, (2020). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortured_artist.
[2] F. Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, The Russian Messenger, 1866.
[3] J. Le Couteur, Penny; Burreson, Napoleon’s Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History, Penguin Random House, 2004.