I’ve been feeling called to write for a while now, which means it’s also been a while since I’ve written. I’m not sure if the inaction is due to resistance or that I had misjudged the feeling as a calling. Maybe I just felt pressured whenever an hour without writing passes by.
I’ve also been feeling called to stop, which means as well that it’s been a while since I’ve let myself—my mind, mostly, in this case—rest.
Amusingly life finds ways to force one what one has to do. In my case: yesterday, I feel down from the stairs and I haven’t been able to walk properly since.
I don’t know what I had planned to do yesterday, but I knew clearly that lying down the whole day wasn’t what I had in mind. At one point, I thought I could just lie down with my laptop and write. Write about that experience lying down not being able to do anything, write about the thoughts that have been fleeting through my headspace.
“Maybe this time I can get to them. Maybe this is my chance to stop and just be.”
Like any good story, that was not how it went. Rather, I was just stuck in the couch in an almost-unbearable pain from my right foot’s interaction with gravity. The only other thing I could do was distract myself with the same things I have been distracting myself with from the clutter that is my mind.
Hence, I thought at first that maybe it’s just that: “Perhaps, I really am not to do anything.”
The injury was partly fate and partly because I had been pushing a little too much recently. My leg couldn’t tell me it needed rest except by halting function altogether.
Right now, however, is already more than a day later and much of the pain has been subsiding. It’s been much easier to limp to my room upstairs and back now yet the wall in my mind is still ever-present. I wonder why.
One thought earlier was that maybe it’s because I don’t actually like what I know would come out, knowing a little too much about what’s to come next. It’s a filter from the past: the words, ideas—they aren’t right.
“But who said so?”
I have no idea, but that’s one possibility. It isn’t that I couldn’t write but that it felt a little too much to struggle against the Critic-I. The words I’d scribble would probably not please myself, anyway, as I’m not in the Ideal State. Why bother, right? Not right now.
Hence, this. These days I’m learning how to rebel better.
Do I know where that tendency to stop myself from doing something that isn’t perfect comes from? Definitely. And fortunately, I’m feeling that knowledge matters less and less.
Honestly, in general, I’m feeling that knowledge matters less and less.
Not that knowing is a bad thing, but that maybe not knowing isn’t as bad as it’s been made out to be. There’s more to that but that isn’t the point right now.
The other thought is this weird vague awareness of a pattern of events. Something similar to a time of lacking energy, followed by a sudden surge of ideas, and immediately after that (before any action can ever be taken), some sort of roadblock or a sprained ankle, and then this. This meaning the time when that roadblock seems to be close to passing but I’m starting to feel it more like quicksand. The more I try to move, the more stuck I seem to get. And that if I don’t move I might get swallowed whole.
The same place where the earlier tendency came from brings about a different set of pressure in the present. This time, I’m merely slightly annoyed. Slightly worried too: it’s like a never-ending cycle I’m stuck in.
Quicksand. You wouldn’t know until you stop.
Is it possible that it isn’t a cycle? Or that it’s a cycle that can still be broken? I hope so. With all my heart I’m hoping for it to be so.
Maybe this time is a reminder to move on from the struggles of the past. The Child-I had been a better rebel. The I now can be as well.
Where’s that place I feel imprisoned in?
“Look, see! The bars are solid you can pass through.”
Like water.
“The other side awaits.”
I’ve got one foot out but right now I can’t help but look back. I’m not so sure why—to be certain that all’s clear?
“That isn’t possible. Or, better yet: why do you have to?”
Is it okay to leave a mess behind? One side’s my obsessive-compulsive personality dis-order; the other says that’s art.
Ah, how blessed am I to have both pleasure and medicine in one pill.
“So, can we move forward now? To the light?”
Why do I have to ask to be sure? I’ll just get on with it.