So I realized today that I haven't posted anything on here since January (unforgivable!). The past few months have been pretty hectic; so much so that my time online has been greatly reduced. But that is to change. Among a number of other goals, one of my big ones is to be posting as often as possible on here - even if just a few lines of text. Perhaps even trying to write a post a day.
Over the months since my last post, which was ironically about how much I wasn't worrying about anything, I have developed a serious struggle with anxiety. Perhaps it had been percolating under the surface of my thoughts and, like all things bubbly, it was only a matter of time before the anxiety boiled over everything else. All of my efforts to remain calm and positive began to go by the wayside, and my worry about money, relationships, life, whether I can make it and, worst of all, health took a fierce hold. No doubt I will post about my health anxiety in the days and weeks to come, because that anxiety has become a large part of my life. However, today is not that day.
As I suffered from anxiety, I also found myself giving into bouts of unease, depression, horrible nostalgia, ennui, listlessness, and general inability to write... well... anything. I had forgotten many of the things that I have been working hard to strengthen about myself; things like treating others with respect and kindness, and living a life of philanthropy. I was not mean to others, to clarify. I didn't treat others badly - I simply didn't treat others at all. I spent so much time being miserable that all I thought about was my own issues and my own struggles. It is, in short, a pretty self involved way to live my life.
My girlfriend has been an incredible blessing in this whole mess. While I have been reminiscing on the so-called good times (which weren't really good at all, and not even as blessing filled as my recent years have been), while I have been panicking about which cancer I have today, while I have been unable to leave my head and relax, she has been there. She hasn't always been patient (because, I'll admit, I wouldn't be), but she has been there to kick my tuckus when it needed kicking, and she has been there to offer guidance and thoughts when I needed guidance and thoughts. She has been there when I simply needed someone to pat my back and let me work through my panic attacks. Amanda has been there when I am certain someone else might have left. The result is that I have a new found appreciation for the incredible woman I am dating, and I constantly strive every single day to show her how grateful I am for her presence in my life.
Meanwhile, I have returned to writing. It was slow at first, but it began by writing about things and people in my life that are gone - things and people that I miss greatly. In some cases, the people about whom I was writing are people with whom I no longer have the relationship I once had - people with whom I feel afraid to bring up the past. All of this had been saddening me a lot, and as I wrote I felt my heart grow lighter. It's funny how those things work. Somehow getting it out on the page helps sort thoughts out and makes senseless things make sense.
Once I did that, I started writing again for real. I even got the courage to send my book out to a publishers - I was horribly rejected and that was wonderful. I framed the letter! A response, however impersonal, is still a response. I am certain to get many rejections for months and years to come. But I will keep writing and keep trying. I have even been writing short stories, which I intend to send to various magazines of the literary variety. I am doing what I love and the result is that I am once again happy.
Furthermore, I have been cleaning up my resume and I am working on finding both other jobs and graduate programs in the hopes that I might find something that involves the use of my writing degree.
There is a lot of good that has come out of the bad times that I have had, and I am certain to devote a post to each of these things at some point: my relationship with Amanda is better and more honest than it has ever been; my relationship with my parents is more founded on trust and mutual respect, as they were the first people I turned to as I struggled with anxiety; I am working every day to better myself and do the works for others about which I discussed months back; I have accepted that I am far from perfect and, like the best of us, I have to have the courage to check in on myself and make sure that I am caring for my well being as well; I have a new appreciation for writing. I might argue that I never truly appreciated writing before now. I also realized an important fact about myself:
That I am not happy with where I am.
For four years I studied as a literature and creative writing major. Since my graduation in 2011, I have done very little with my writing and with my degree - something that I have wanted to rectify for longer than I knew. I want to find work in writing, and yet I have been paralyzed with fear that I don't have what it takes to make it as a writer. However, as long as I am afraid that I don't have what it takes to make it as a writer - as long as I don't do anything - I will never make it as a writer.
Hellooooo self fulfilling prophecy.
So I have come to a very simple resolution: write more. Send that writing out. Get published. Get experience. Be the writer you know you can be and follow the career path you always wanted to follow.
Most importantly, I have a new relationship with God. I have always prayed and always gone to church, but I think that these are the days where I truly have a relationship with Him that I never had before. Again, there will be a post about this further.
It's astounding to me the kind of amazing things that can come from a bad time in your life.
No comments:
Post a Comment