Writer’s Search

Posted on October 7, 2002 in Reflections Writing

From about 1987 until 1992, I did not write except on small lemony post it notes or when called on to cough up an article. I would number these years as the most severe of my depression, when the ring of neurons within my head encased me within a blank cube. I could call this time by many names: the Silence, the Paranoia, or The Pain. What little I have in the way of writing from this period was saved by Lynn, who shoved the yellow post-it notes into boxes and bags for me to sort through at my leisure.

I still have not done so.

Despite the sentences that shouted at me through the white noise of my work and my networking, I stopped keeping a journal, which was (and is again) central to my passion. It did not happen suddenly, though one event keys the start of my dread and clangs away through all the subsequent incidents I might blame. I was visiting the home of my fiance. After we were a safe distance from the house, Judy told me that her mother had read part of my diary. The mother claimed that the book had “just fallen open” to my last entry, a note of despair: “My life is a dung heap.” It was the first of many fragments before the Silence.

I know now that my melancholy was largely driven by a perverse chemistry and by things hitting me due to the oblique angle my psyche had taken in relation to the flesh-encased spirits around me. I did not take ridicule of my ideas and insights well. I envied those who had creative or leadership positions I felt suited for. It wasn’t entirely me, however. People could also be mean or, sometimes, outright invasive. Because of my illness, I suffered more when the boss checked and counter-checked everything I did. It was no illusion when, during the Gulf War (I facilitated the Middle East news groups on PeaceNet), some unknown agency rather obviously bugged my phone. I liken these things to people sticking pins on a patch of skin that was already bruised.

My mind was not silent. It screamed at me almost constantly and asked why I did not take up the pen again. I bought blank notebooks and ring binders that I never filled: boxes filled with diaries kept for only a single page mildew on the shelf next to the things I wrote during the brilliant period before the Pain when I actually believed that the dedication to the task would magically bring me something.

This ends this fragment. I stop here because in talking about this I’ve provoked a paralysis that I feel in the gooey bone chamber next to my heart. My writing teacher, Judy Reeves, says that the stuff that makes the pen stop is the best. I only hear the feelings wordlessly screaming. Silence assuages the inflamed sentiments. A flat affect feels appropriate at the moment.

The thing that provoked these thoughts was a visit I paid to a writer’s critique group at the Barnes and Noble in Aliso Viejo. I still have not decided if this is suitable for me. I chose the “Advanced Writers” group because I did not want peers who struggled to form a sentence. Now I dread self-importance — in my self and in others who may speak to my work.