Welcome to the gray area between blogging and journaling.
I have no idea what I want to say.
We got a shipment of my books yesterday, and I wanted to write a post about my dark, depressing history with writing, and how I found all these marvelous tools for overcoming it and learning to love divine inspiration and my quirky interpretations thereof. But instead, the sight of the books threw me right back into the arms of despair, and now I’m here to tell you that healing is a sham and old wounds bleed eternal.
What a wonderful message from a professional healer!
Part of it is honest, though: the deepest cuts take a long time to mend. While my approaches to recovery can seem magical (energy work? shamanism?), you’d be misled to believe they are miraculous. Plenty has been written about the nature of the “healing crisis” – including in relation to reiki – and while most articles focus on physical symptoms, the mental, spiritual, and emotional realms are hardly exempt. I’ve reached the end of my 21-day post-reiki-attunement “cleanse,” and let me tell you, this week has been ROUGH. Clearing the dust the first 7 days was icky enough; this final round has gone much, much deeper. Childhood abuses have been dredged up, glaring errors, haunting regrets, and moments of profound embarrassment (I mean, I can’t believe I said that thing 19 years ago).
But nothing tops my novel in terms of consolidated shame, self-loathing, resentment, jealousy, and doubt. After decades of secret writing and creative self-destruction (having been told in no uncertain terms that my writing was dysfunctional and sick), going public with my hobby triggered crippling social anxiety, OCD, a full mental-breakdown, and pushed me to the brink of narcissism. To wit: the need for validation and the willingness to kill your soul to get it truly does make you a horrible person to be around – one who neglects and mistreats loved ones, takes everything personally, and fails to take pleasure in the simple side of life.
Do forgive my language, but FUCK THAT.
Lucky for me, I enjoyed a happy irony with writing: the illness was also the cure in my case. My need to write both bit me and stitched up the wound. Purging Farewell, Everything from my system was in no small way like the great purge at the end of the book itself (spoilers not intended). I untangled my own self-loathing and resistance to love through Osha and his relationships. I vented my frustrations – my fear of climate change, my horror at history (and its tendency to repeat), my longing for political nuance, my symbolic need to “come out.” I removed my own innards, put them into my main character, and once and for all identified just what was “eating me.”
You wanna talk about miracle cures. Exorcising personal demons through fiction makes therapy seem like a waste of time. By the time I finished Farewell, Everything, I’d turned my whole life around. Never mind that it took ten years to write, and the process was anything but pretty.
And never mind the here and now, for that matter – as I willfully ignore the benefits of writing, denying the healing I got out of it, denying myself – wishing again for external validation, praise and approval. To be rewarded for my hard work, as though overcoming my own case of “bugs” wasn’t reward enough. I want my words to be heard. I want my thoughts, for once in my life, to be accepted.
It all goes back to the voices I grew up around, telling me my writing has no place in the world, invalidating my creative impulses at every turn. It goes back to needing to prove myself to people I don’t even talk to anymore! That I “resorted” to self-publishing, after countless rejections, feels like a failure. Bookstores – previously my sanctuaries – now demand that I steel myself before entering, lest I fall prey to that ever-hungry spirit, Jealousy. Alas! All those real authors! All those real books!
I know it’s an illusion. Even if I’d been picked up by HarperCollins and sold a million copies, the soul-ulcer would remain. If Bojack Horseman taught us anything, it’s that no amount of success satisfies when your parents refuse to see it.
Still, creative “failure” is a pernicious poison, one that seeps into all corners of a life. It goes against the so-called “truth” that the energy you put out comes back to you. When you pour your blood, sweat and tears into a project for a decade and it’s met with crickets, it’s all too easy to have that undermine all future endeavors. Either what I put out is worthless, or universal laws just don’t apply to me. So why bother doing anything?
Why bother starting a healing business? Why bother parenting? Why bother getting out of bed? Why bother living?
And doooown the slide we go!
I refuse to fall back into these vicious patterns of thought, though. I refuse to let self-absorption and self-sabotage define me. And yet, I’m not going to pretend I don’t feel these things. I’m not going to repress these thoughts and let them metastasize in the depths of my subconscious. I’ll give them air. I’ll wait them out. If I ever hope to be useful to the world – in any fashion – I know better than to drain and muddle myself with denied feelings.
Looking at my books right now, all piled up and threatening, I see nothing but flaws. If I’m honest, though, the only way to correct them is to write a whole new book. A sequel – one in which more old wounds get reopened: memory, guilt, intergenerational trauma. One in which I give my characters – and through them, myself – the medicine we all need to heal.
Ya know, love. Crap like that.
But until I find a path around (or more likely, through) my self-doubt and vain desire for recognition, my characters will have to wait – for my inner-sludge to get stirred, for my demons to float to the surface, for a deep-sea fish so deformed and terrifying that it can’t be faced, but can only be dealt with metaphorically. After all, without good old fashioned pain, there’s very little motive to heal. And healing is what I write for.
Whether I like it or not.