Have I Forgotten How to Write?

Hey, there. It’s been a while. Not just since I’ve been on Vocal, but since I’ve written… anything.

Actually, I’m pretty sure this is the longest I’ve gone without writing in my whole life.

This is awkward; clumsy.

I fear, I’ve forgotten how to write. Like forgetting your mother’s voice.

It hurts.

I looked at my hands today and cried. I used to write with these hands. I used to paint and take photographs and play piano and pet my dog. Now I burn them on plates while serving high-end food to people who barely consider me human.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my job.

But I’m exhausted.

(Aren’t we all?)

I’m grateful every day for my new start in life. I love my home and my community. I adore my fiancé. My career in hospitality excites me, and I get to live in one of the most beautiful places in Ontario. To say I feel blessed would be the understatement of the year. At the same time, in the thrill of all this, I’ve felt myself drift further and further away from writing. It took me a long time to realize why.

I’ve been avoiding writing because writing means remembering. And I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to drift down from the pink cloud I’ve been in this past year, living in a remote village with my Australian Cowboy. I don’t want to think about being The Girl in the Purple Window, or the psychosis that was the six years of my life before coming up north.

Writing means feeling; dissecting. Diving and dwelling in the deep end of what was instead of building what is. That’s what I’ve been telling myself, at least.

Until everything started to fall apart.

Well, not really. I’m being dramatic.

I’ve just been crying a lot lately. Because try as I might, the remembering comes, the dwelling and diving and all that jazz happens, whether I write about it or not.

I can ignore my journal but try as I might, I cannot ignore myself.

My Australian Cowboy has been encouraging me to write. I’ve been nodding along and pretending the idea doesn’t terrify me. Today, I caved. I wrote about a chapter of my life I’d forgotten about and for the first time realized it was actually kind of sad. How, if I were to be asked about whether or not there was a moral to that story, I’d say the girl should have just kept being herself.

Writing is a huge part of who I am and how I process the world. Not writing has made me feel like a shell, whether I’d like to admit it or not. So maybe it’s time I stop this cycle of avoiding myself and face the facts: I can run but I can’t hide.

So maybe I should stop hiding.

Besides…

The rust eventually shakes off. What’s deep in the grey matter resurfaces. Those pesky memories poke up and no amount of pushing daisies will lay them to rest until their ghost is honoured. I have reached the tipping point where to avoid the pain is to prolong the pain.

Besides…

This writing thing? I get a kick out of it.

I forgot about that part until now.

Actually, I think that’s the most important part.