I’m so scared to open a new Word
document; whatever might show up next on the screen may be completely specious
and illiterate. M says I should
write more. Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps I’ve been wasting too much time playing
computer games that destroy my mind, making my sense of creativity soft and
immobile. It has been so long since I created. I play my ukulele, I took my tap
classes, but alas, I create nothing. I create absolutely nothing since I’ve
created my children.
They’ve taken—or rather, I’ve taken,
as I’m the one responsible for making them—my will to create, my joie de vivre
of creation out of my bones and have used it for their elaborate train rail
set-ups, their wooden block houses, their doll beds from cardboard boxes. They
freely scribble on an easel with markers and crayons anything that pours forth
from their small hands. I’m jealous of this. I can’t remember the last time
I’ve created anything beyond dinner; lately even the most basic meals have been
rushed, sloppy affairs where I’m trying to create something out of leftovers
that have twice been re-animated.
How am I to get back to the flush
of spasmodic existence that was my creative late teens and early twenties? Is
it possible to recapture it somehow, like a rare butterfly, or is it ethereal,
little more than dust motes in the afternoon sunbeams that seem to only be
noticed by my cat? Is this the
end, or the limit of my intentional creative abilities? My brain feels so
slow—so lackadaisical to spur forth knowledge that used to gush out of my
once-eloquent mouth, that I feel my creative time is up. If you’ve had children, maybe you feel
the same. If not, well…I won’t say not to procreate, but I will say that you
should plan to get all your good ideas out now, rather than wait for the slow
mental decline that will meet you once the umbilical cord is forever severed.
Even at this very moment, as I look
back at what I’ve written, I’m tired. I don’t want to read this, I don’t want
to continue this note, this essay or whatever the hell it is…My brain is simply
at its worst. My discipline is nil. All this at a time when most people are
imagining their New Year’s Resolutions, their plans for a better start, a new
life, a new endeavor. Sarcastic? Hardly. This is realism. This is my creative
life now, and while I assume it has settled in, just like Milo when he reaches
the Doldrums, I crave a Tic-Tock Dog to invigorate me once again.
Who or what will be my Tic-Tock?
Certainly not my husband, and most certainly not my children. I’m not
invigorated by my family members on a creative level anymore; the last time I
was, I wrote a crappy blog that I felt no love for. Essays that mean little
more than wasted digital space. I will not brag about my children teaching me
peace or love or honesty or any other bullshit that parents brag about in other
social networking sites. I’d feel more comfortable writing openly about the
really awful stuff—the depression that comes with raising two children, the
depression that settles in from the decision to stay at home full-time, rather
than explore a desirous career, the depression that comes from knowing that I
will never be the person that I thought I might like to be.
This life, at this time, is filled
with little flecks of light that only manage to escape the majority of dark
matter constantly swirling around…I used to keep waiting for the good stuff to
happen: return of my libido, children sleeping through the night, a husband
that doesn’t fall asleep putting the kids to bed, a room of my own to work in,
a chance to pursue my shh-oh-so-secret desire to act, but alas, I’m still
waiting and I’m tired of waiting. In the immortal words of B.B. King, “the
thrill is gone.”
Post-script: Yes, therapy IS good. CBT is awesome, but if you can't see a piece of writing for what it is--a captured moment from my brain, spewed forth from my fingers onto the little black keys of the laptop--and you fear for my existence or some other silliness you've cooked up in your mind about me, then you simply need to stop worrying and start reading other people's cheerier bloggy bits of fluff, rather than dwelling on mine.
