Tuesday, November 19th, 2013
The amount of times I’ve put off writing for my own sanity in 2013 alone is too high to measure. Some sort of resistance came over me anytime my intention became to write. Here is just a sprinkle into the psyche of someone who is SCARED to write:
- “You have too much work.”
- “Your blog looks ugly. Fix it. Then write.”
- “Why don’t you just finish writing in one of the 15+ canvas notepads you have lying around the apartment? No one cares about your blog.”
- “I wonder if Rihanna and Drake are really dating or not.” (Googling ensues)
- “Did anyone like my last Facebook status? Instagram photo? Tweet?” (Facebook remains open for too long).
- “That smells good. I think I’ll have some.” (negates workout)
- “What’s on the TV?”
- “Mr. Topper is so cute.”
- “I haven’t talked to so and so in a while…”
- ‘You know who I should really IM?”
This is just the tip of the avoidance iceberg.
For some reason, me getting to a place where I could write for writing’s sake was blocked by a wall of energy that surrounded me. It made writing seem forbidden. Or at least not easy to start doing.
I myself definitely put up blocks and I’m not sure why. I do know other people do too, but to what degree they’re aware of this remains unknown. But I know I see it in others and thus I do it too. You can’t see, what you don’t got.
Anyway, now that I am indeed writing again, I’m starting to re-remember the sense of futility that accompanied it. Writing made me feel alive and more in touch with myself, but whether or not that mattered really seemed to be left in the air.
I suppose a big part of me views writing as the documentation of a period of time that will one day end. As will your life. Yes, writing makes me very morbid.
Writing lends itself well to being avoided. It requires you to be distraction free and present within your head. And despite my best efforts to avoid it, I’ve ultimately found it to be the only conduit toward me understanding me.
Do you ever write something and then realize afterwards your voice was nowhere in the words you just typed? That the words you just produced seem to have been created almost by someone outside of you?
It’s amazing how we can be fake even when it’s just us facing a blank screen. It’s become dangerous to be yourself in this day and age. Or at least it feels that way.
Sometimes our safely guarded facades become the realest part of ourselves that we are tapped into. The neatly packaged exterior that doesn’t allow anything unsettling to come through is something we feel comfortable presenting and other people feel comfortable getting to know.
The sheer fact that our vulnerability is also packaged away from sight makes it all the more enticing to keep face, since then we feel less scared about getting hurt or rejected.
“Hell is other people,” Sartre once said.
I’d like to amend that to “Hell is knowing yourself through what other people think.”
I have grappled much of my life with what other people think of me. This may be because growing up few people thought of me at all, and when they did, it was a punchline.
So, when I can get that approval (or better yet, admiration), I so wanted my entire life and didn’t receive, it heals those childhood wounds. And for what it’s worth, I am definitely someone who believes there is something to be learned from knowing yourself from a psychoanaltyical point of view. However, I do think it’s only one point of view and one that can also lend itself to overindulgence in one’s feelings about the past.
I guess that’s all for now. Nothing else is coming to mind and I’m just happy that I finally wrote anything at all.
Source:
http://beckybrooksblog.com/2013/11/20/need-just-one-true-start-not-more-false-ones/