I’m still having difficulty writing. However, although I’ve been struggling with my writing, I’ve still been using other creative outlets to cope with the frustrations of my illness. I’m making index card art with more frequency. Instead of using my sketchbook, it’s easier to carry a small stack of white 6 inch x 4 inch cards (15.24 cm x 10.16 cm) and a few pens around with me to draw something, while attending my pain management programs and other medical appointments.
Line drawing and basic doodling have become easy ways to distract myself from thinking about my pain. I guess that makes writing the harder way I’ve chosen to cope with my pain, since the greater my pain the less able I am to focus and concentrate on putting words together on a page. I’m anxiously anticipating a break in the block because writing has always been part of my self-care.
IC #16 – Lined Hypnotic
In the meantime, I can I only hope my pain management program instructors understand that I can draw lines on index cards and still pay attention to the information they share…
Writer’s block is a terrible affliction. I have so much happening in my life that I want and need to write about but my brain seems to be locked in a struggle with itself about which story to tell first and how to tell them. I started my blog as one way to cope with my illness so I wasn’t trapped inside my own thoughts, especially the negative ones. However, lately, even with so much happening to and around me, I can’t let much of it out. I must have at least half a dozen posts started but they are each a long way from finished.
Luckily, I’ve been able to maintain my connection to the creative practice that I also started as another method of coping, so the art is still being created. I’ve been posting what I’ve been creating on my Instagram page, which I suppose is a small release because I do write captions for the things I share. Still, I need to figure out a way to clear the cobwebs or lift the brain fog – whichever idiom is more suitable – so I can get back to documenting and sharing my experiences with the unending hope that what I write helps someone have a better day, as much as it usually helps me.
Yesterday, as I prepared to take a shower – yes, I have to prepare to take showers now and I know that there are many people who can identify with this – I realized that the harder hit I am by something the longer it takes me to share it with the people in my life or write about in my journal, or here. I had to think about that for a bit. What is it that is blocking me from opening up about things, even in this anonymous setting?
I’ve always been a thinker, but I believe I am truly suffering from what I keep seeing referred to as ‘brain fog’. It’s taking me longer to process things emotionally and intellectually. I’m used to emotional delays because I tend to compartmentalize my feelings to deal with them when it feels safe or when I’m forced to because anxiety gets the best of me and I have to unpack some of my baggage. However, I’m usually pretty good at sifting through logical puzzles by taking information in, synthesizing it and then applying it in relevant situations.
But not now. Not since my illness arrived.
Now my concentration is spotty. I will have the intention to talk to someone about something significant that happened in my day then that conversation won’t happen. Because I don’t remember or I’m too overwhelmed by emotion not to cry. I will have the intention to write about an experience then that writing won’t happen. Because the words needed to articulate the tale don’t show up or come in such a rush they get jumbled. I will have the intention to journal to sort through the mental and emotional tangle but that detangling won’t happen. Because the effort to put pencil to paper or fingers to keyboard feels too great.
Those few moments of introspection made me see that I’ve been looking for a defect in myself where there isn’t one. My thoughts and emotions are out of whack because of my pain and the pain medications I take to manage it. Intellectually I know this, but in the moment when something goes askew I forget and I beat myself up about what I should have done and question why I didn’t when the answer is obvious. I don’t do or remember to do because my brain is submerged in a soupy fog for many hours of each day.
I read about this same experience in the lives of others daily. I have great compassion for each person who shares their struggle. Now I have to be compassionate with myself.
My Small Surrenders 