It's interesting to consider what prompts me to write. It comes in fits and starts, a rush of enthusiasm and an outpouring of what is going on within, an earnest attempt to connect with self and occasionally very select others. It's always in the context of shaky mental health, and it always helps.
What is it about writing that makes it cathartic? Would it not be just as helpful, or even more so, to have a conversation with someone? Well actually, yes, it probably would - but a crucial element is often missing here - courage. It may be evident from past writings, that I think a lot about what other people might think, and what they might think of me, and while I have worked really hard to become secure enough in my own thinking and feeling to acknowledge where I stand, it is often nothing short of impossible to actually open my mouth and say it out loud.
The world is in a strange place right now - contact limited, connection mostly over video link, and it shows the incredible limitations of words without the extra communication layer of being in a room with someone, and makes the importance of which words are said even greater. So as someone who does not necessarily think very quickly in conversation, and likes space to think about how to convey something important in words rather than by gesture, writing is currently a more powerful tool to connect and honestly express.
It's been a tough year for everyone, and as I was already wobbling off the straight and narrow, it has been particularly tough to keep going in any kind of direction. Previously, I've likened recovery/illness to a series of paths which I've set off along, only to realise I was going the wrong way and come back to centre to start again. It felt a bit like that earlier this year, when I decided (OK, let's be honest, someone drew my attention to the fact) that the time had come for another round of therapy. I found this pretty hard to accept, given that I have 'done' it so many times before. Talking to newly acquired therapist, he pointed out, as I already know, that I have learned my process, I know what my flawed thinking is and why it is, and yet still every now and then I come back to a point where I need to delve again into the hurt-box and remember where to find my voice. But that doesn't mean I have lost the learning I have already done - I might be returning to the centre, to the 'start', but that doesn't mean the journey before was fruitless. Sure, it led to a dead end and there were some really fucking bumpy bits along it, but navigating that road means I picked things up on the way, even if a lot of those things were grazes and bruises from tripping over the bumpy sections. I have learned and keep in mind, this time, perspective.
There are days, and quite honestly many of them, when I don't actually want to be here, such is the background level of hurt, shame, and just plain sadness which lingers from years past and is ready to spring up to hijack any kind of ordinary, if challenging, life event. It's my experience that therapists greatly enjoy a metaphor - as do I - so in explaining where things sat for me at the time, I likened my experience to a science experiment that stuck with me in primary school, whereby a jar was filled with beans - when no more beans can go in, is it full? Well yes, of course. But what if you then added sand? Somehow there is space for more - but surely now it is full? Yes. Until you add some water. Such is the way I've treated myself for a long time, and probably even more so of late - having a child, a husband, caring responsibilities for elderly mother in law, little practical help close by and then, if you please, a fucking national lockdown that prevented seeing friends and finding any light relief from the above responsibilities - well it became almost necessary to keep adding stuff to the jar. Eventually, however, it does become full, and it starts spilling over the sides. Realistically, I will always have a jar which is full of beans. I can't delete the past, I can't remove the effect it had on me, and I can't change the chemistry of my brain. But I can stop adding sand, or at the very least, recognise that once the sand is in, it really is full and trying to add water is only going to make the whole of the contents spill, beans and all.
So writing is my attempt to filter out the sand - to make sure I don't add more without taking something out first. I might be back at the start, but I can begin the next path with the intention of shedding some of the load along the way, as I pick up new, more useful things.
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