Healing

Breathe, darling. This is just a chapter. It’s not your whole story.

I took my thinking time, researching time, dreaming time, and above else, writing time.

I used realism, cynicism, idealism, imagination, and awe.

I needed to be naïve at times, sophisticated, observant, obsessive, focused, a dreamer, sometimes at different times, sometimes all at the same time.

I had to work hard, but also to hold still and just stare.

I was disappointed, committed, thrilled, emotionally unstable, intellectually courageous.

It took almost all my energy because I knew that my writing would enrage some people, and thus put me in danger.

I was mostly inspired and intrigued by small things, gestures, facial expressions, brief events, fleeting moments, glimpses that kept me fantasizing about for hours, days, weeks.

I was constantly on the lookout for new stories, anecdotes, episodes, in books, conversations, magazines, on the radio, podcasts, or online.

Sometimes it feels that my heart and soul spill over. But I realise that both are vessels with seemingly endless capacity.

To get to this point wasn’t easy. I struggled, I did and said the wrong things. I caused an emotional stir with people surrounding me despite meaning well. It was like a virus making its way through a number of systems that were hopelessly unprepared for what was to come. I had no choice but withdraw.

Withdrawal symptoms are difficult to overcome sometimes, and they leave you disheveled, hurt, and feeling small. It takes a lot of energy to work your way out of this mess again.

Yet here I am, and thanks to numerous notebooks I filled in the meantime I can safely say that writing saved me.

It took awareness, self-forgiveness, forgiveness, and love – and realizing where the demons lurk. I had not expected them to be so close.

They are still out there, waiting for their opportunity maybe. But I have learned to tread lightly so as not to wake them up again.

Never. Again.

***

Think for a moment:

  • how many struggles,
  • how many battles,
  • how many difficulties,
  • how much sadness,
  • how much happiness,
  • how many love stories,
  • how many expressions of hope for the future

did it take for me to exist in this very moment?

Photo credits: Katrina Wright on www.unsplash.com – Thank you, Katrina!