That String Of Hope | On Writer's Block and Destiny

I'm struggling. I am in a deep dark black pit of writerly depression. It's not like regular depression. And also it is. It is like having a spider in my brain. I am deathly afraid of spiders. It is a crippling phobia of mine that grows worse with time. You'd think I'd become more rational about it as I get older. You'd think I'd get braver. But I don't. I hate spiders. And the more I think "I hate spiders," the more terrified of them I become. And this writerly depression is like living with a spider in my brain. My greatest fear, my crippling Achilles' heel, that which I nightmare about is a living, breathing presence in my mind every second, every day.

I am a writer.

I can't write.

These two things don't go together. It is like being broken, a thousand tiny pieces. And everything I need to function is right there on the kitchen floor, ready for reassembly. But I don't know how the pieces fit. I don't know what goes where. And even if I could put everything in its place, does something shattered ever truly function again? Can it? If you break something -- something tangible -- in real life, do you really fix it? Or do you sweep it up, throw it away, and go get a new one? Honestly, it's easier. Faster. Less agonizing. I have broken several phones and computers in my lifetime. I shattered an iPhone 5, much to my shame. These things aren't easily fixed. But they are easily replaced. Easily, yet expensively. Still...

But somehow this writerly thing in me, this need to breathe words onto a page, is not just part of me, a piece. It's like... me. It is the me part of me. I don't know how to dislodge it from the rest of me, because it is an essential bit. To replace it...is to replace me... Can I replace me? Am I...expendable to myself?

I am a broken writer. Yes, I know I am many other things. I am a wife. I am a mother(-to-be). I am a daughter. I am a sister. I am a friend. I am a musician. I am a Christian above all. But I am still a writer...right? I wasn't storyboarding at 9 years old because it's what all the cool kids were doing. I was doing it because it was me and I was it and it was as natural as breathing. And as necessary.

And now...? Now I've lost it.

That string of hope.

In the tapestry of our great destinies, sometimes there is a string. One that is threaded through our souls, intricately and delicately laced among the fabric of our beings. It is tenuous. It is light. And when we find it, we cling with our whole selves to it because--ah! here we are! It is the seam that ties everything we are and were and want to be together. It is hope. And as it is woven and spun into the great canvas of time and space, we are unraveled, let loose to be what we were always meant to be. Free. Is this not what we were created for? Is this not what we have lost ourselves to in dreams and daydreams and visions and hope? Some kind of calling? Some kind of knowing?

And now at last I have released the string. Finger by finger, my hand has been pried away. I am holding empty air which carries nothing of my destiny inside. How can I abide that? How can I stomach it? I've seen the future--all of its resonant possibilities. The stars have burned and I have burned with them. And to succumb now to the cooling of the embers, to grasp the string of complacency, of desperation, to settle--is that not criminal? Is that not the most reprehensible choice in light of everything else? To have held truth in your hand and then let it be ripped away without a fight...

No. I will fight. I will not surrender to this darkness. I will not go gentle. I will not let my dreams rust into nightmares, corrode into terrors. I will not let the metaphysical spiders infest my mind. I will battle and war and scream and shout and cut and tear at the blackness until my fists are full again. That string of hope. That thread of destiny. It is mine. It will not unwind.

I am a writer.

I am a writer.

I am a writer.

I am a writer.

I am a writer.

I am a writer.

I am. I am. I am. I am. I know I am.

The darkness cannot have me.





So...what will you fight for?

Be prepared to fail as many times as it takes until you succeed.

--Ray Moore, my ever-wise husband