What I CAN Do

“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.