Feb 15, 2014

cannot write or feel

Here's another thought: I can't seem to be able to do creative writing anymore, and it's really frightening. I think I can only write in a special, beautiful sort of pain. I'm often unable to conjure up that emotion myself, and when I can't, my writing comes out looking too forced and fake. I think the writings I like more are the ones I wrote in a twenty-minute spill (e.g. 'gentlemen'; 'do i really make you that happy?') instead of those I really spent time trying to conjure. when i'm trying, it shows in a bad way. My attraction to creative writing didn't come consciously; i simply felt my blog was an effective outlet for my all-too-powerful emotions. I only learnt to inject emotions into writing in '09, after my first breakup. Right now things are going great and I'm largely a happy person, and I also haven't written any satisfactory creative piece since...before college started.

This is sad. I know I love to write, and I am very unpolished and untrained but I would love to hone the skill; but I just can't, can't write somehow. Writing was the one thing I knew I wanted to do when I was thinking about university applications. If I don't pursue writing at all in the future, and leave it to be nothing more than a teenage hobby, would the 18-year-old me hate myself? It's the only comfort I have, my only refuge, the only skill I would dare to identify myself with. What is left now?

Maybe this post carries a little hint to why things are like that now. In all the pain that had nowhere to run, I became afraid to feel. I remember the days where I'd come home, my heart in a mess, and I'd just sit in front of the computer for half an hour and my fingers would fly and poetic prose would spill forth and then when I hit 'Publish' and saw my emotions on the screen, everything was okay again, and I'd be able to get back to my work. It was like childbirth. The pain would come, but it only intends for you to push it out and release a beautiful story into the world; once that piece has been created the pain goes away because its purpose has been fulfilled.
But those days stopped - the pain got too intense. And then later on, when things were good, I was afraid to feel pain once I knew a life apart from it. I actually ran from emotions, hated them, scolded myself for them, lifted them all back to God. Never to love like I loved again. Never to let the heart wrench and kill myself.

Even now, I am still afraid of the negative feelings. They don't translate into any sort of inspiration for writing anymore - or maybe it's just that I don't hurt as much as I used to now; I haven't hit the level of pain required to turn the shoka into shloka (grief into poetry HAHAHA sanskrit & the ramayana bitchez). Yup, I have recently determined to be self-sufficient, and to be responsible for my own joy, and I am in a very good place in my life right now. I'm happy. I'm not crumbling with pain like I used to. Is that a bad thing? I don't entertain sadness for long enough to make use of it anymore. I immediately scold myself, make myself feel better, don't think about the things that trouble me. Is that a bad thing?

Have I lost the capacity for creative writing? Maybe I'll have to wait for the next time I drown to tell.

No comments: