“Her scar tissue, which she seems to amass both physically and mentally, may not be pretty, but they have become tougher than if she had never been wounded at all.” -Donna Lynn Hope
Writers are persistent and resilient. They have to be. Cowards and wimps don’t survive. I should have this, right? I’ve always been tenacious, too much so.
Once I’d stopped struggling to move forward, stopped crying
and feeling sorry for myself, (It seems I always have to do a bit of that. I
hate it. It makes me feel so weak, a crybaby, but the tears always come despite
how I fight them. I do wonder if all the wonderful people who face health and
life challenges you see in the news because they are so strong and smile in the
face of adversity…I wonder if off camera they have their little time of crying
and self-pity. I’ve always told myself everyone does. Am I just making myself
feel better?) Anyway, after I surrendered to the side effects of the meds and brain
fog, I knew I had to regroup. Had to pull it together. Find a way to hold onto
my writing, to move forward, to not give up, not tread water.
Move forward.
I had to stop thinking and fixating of all the stuff I
couldn’t do. Figure out what I could do. I had to stop thinking about what
seemed impossible and concentrate on what was possible.
So….exactly what could I do? What one thing could I still do
to move forward with my writing?
When things get tough, how do you move on? How do you keep
moving forward when it feels as if a jungle is closing in on you? When
roadblocks seemed to turn up every day? Exactly what could I use as my machete?
My bulldozer?
I didn’t know. No, ah ha, moment. Ideas were as dull as my
head. I fiddled around in my office for a few days, going through papers and
files, looking over the novel I had been editing, sobbing a little at all the
work I had put into my novels and all the paper. Well, writing creates paper,
even when you have most of your writing on the computer. (And just for the
record, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been glad of that.) Oh, and I was falling
asleep at my desk (side effect of two of the meds I was on) A few more
frustrated tears.
What could I do? I couldn’t come up with words or ideas, or
inspiration. My mind and heart and whatever quality brought up words,
sentences, writing was blank. Worse, everything in me felt dull. Still, there
had to be something I could do.
Then it struck me. There were files and files of ideas I
hadn’t yet entered into my computer. Pages of ideas in my journals I hadn’t
transcribed. I might not be able to come up with anything new. I might be dull
and without one ounce of inspiration, but I had shadow work, and notes, and
ideas waiting to be worked on. I could get them ready, so to speak, for when I
could do what I loved to do again. I could type.
So I typed. I spent six months typing in ideas from magazine
tear-outs that had spark a poem or story idea and journal entries into their
own documents. I let my fingers fly and I stop worrying about what I couldn’t
do, wasn’t getting down. Stopped worrying about what this disruption might be
doing to my writing dreams. I just kept typing and telling myself when I was
done with the meds and back to my old self I would have all this material,
waiting. Kept telling myself I would trust that I was putting in place the start
of some wonderful work, that when I could I would gather up everything worth
saving and make something worthy. It meant I had to have faith.
A little voice kept
reminding me, it happened before. That first time I battled MPGN. I’d
forgotten. I’d forgotten a lot of what I went through. I wanted to forget. I
wanted to put it behind me and never think of it again. I didn’t take serious;
the chronic part of this disease because I wanted to believe I’d never have to
deal with it again. That was just plain dumb of me. Thinking positive is great,
but I wished I had had a battle plan from before and a diary, so that some of
the things wouldn’t come as such a shock all over again.
Well, this time around, I am writing down the changes in my
mind, body, spirit. I’m recording what I did to combat what. I’m making sure I
have a battle plan for next time.
