the fruitcake

So I decided to rip off RLP by rewriting this post with his man in black substituted for my own. Shameless, hey, but I thought it was a good excercise - personifying your unconscious, the parts of you that cause and create your writing. What would they be like, what would they say, would you get on with them?

Anyway, I tried it, hoping I could get to the bottom of my complete inability to write and then post it on here by way of breaking the block. It half worked, in that I figured out pretty quickly why I'm not writing anymore, but then got upset. Really upset.

It turns out that I know exactly why I'm not writing, it's screamingly fucking obvious but it's also tied up, achingly so, with pretty much every other issue in my life. I do want to try and explain it here. if only so (if this is the last post I ever make) passers-by will see an appropriate full-stop on this rambling journal of the last three years. But the 'man in black' format really isn't the right way of doing it. See, once I coaxed him out, put a drink in his hand and sat him down by a roaring fire for some chit-chat, he wouldn't shut up. That bastard thinks he's got an answer for everything. Mainly because, well, he does.

I haven't quite plucked up the balls to tell you what he said, yet. First I want to say a couple of things about this blog, why I'm so fixated on my failing to keep it up.

1) It's almost embarassing to admit it but this stupid little site means an incredible amount to me. I've been painfully open about my life on here, using it as an ill-disguised source of therapy throughout the absolute hardest period of my life. There's been periods where I literally could not have coped without having this as an outlet, where the only comfort I could find on black days was planning these posts, putting them up and waiting on tenterhooks to see who might comment and what they might say. It sounds pathetic, even to myself, but when you're that low, a friend or someone you barely know dropping by to say 'that was good' or 'hang in there' can mark the difference between a hideous day or a better day. Writing here, striving to write well, not only gave me immense satisfaction in the work itself but the comfort of knowing people were listening. However distantly.

2) I guess this is the same point, but writing is the only thing I've ever really felt that I was any good at it. I knew I was sometimes good at drama, sometimes clever, sometimes pretty, sometimes funny, but I've always been able to write. It's the only thing I've ever felt was talent rather than fluke. When I was 15 I won a literary competition at school and the judge said a lot of things, about how I could turn professional, how he would give my name to his publishers. It was flattery, a nice little prize, but it didn't stop me waiting every day for someone to call. It also started me writing for real, in earnest, constantly. Obsessively. I never got a call, there was never any publisher but the can was open and worms were everywhere. I didn't stop writing until about September last year. That's about 4 years of constant scribbling. Now it's gone. Take a moment to imagine what this sudden absence feels like.

3) I know this blog isn't dead yet. Most months show a couple of posts, however bad or pointless they might be. And I know that the sheer volume of writing I produced during the first year of uni couldn't last forever. It was insane. I was posting almost every day, alongside writing two separate diaries, countless poems and pieces of fiction. Then there was the compulsive note taking and essay writing and just shit that I couldn't stop putting down. Was physically terrified of not writing. It became a symptom of the illness, it became an actual fixation, but I think I would have died without it. It was an extreme, but the material I produced then (some posted on this blog, some not) is one of the only things I am actually proud of. Now I've reached the other extreme. For the last year or so, what you see on this blog is actually the sum total of my output. It's shit. I am no longer proud.


4) There aren't that many coincidences in how my relationship with writing has developed. I started working at it when someone told me I was good; started blogging when I was feeling particularly confident about my ability to be interesting; started blogging about serious matters as soon as I realised that the internet wasn't gonna laugh at me. Then, I left home, started uni, and everything changed. The only constant things were being miserable and wanting, needing to write about it. So I did. As I got more and more depressed I wrote more and more, with increasing honesty, about myself, my illness, my faith, my life. I reached breaking point. Got help. Got put on meds. Lost my faith.

Six months later, I guess it was, I took myself off meds, got a new boyfriend who subsequently came to live with me. It's difficult to get lost in your head when you and the person you're in love with are cohabiting with everything you own in a comparatively small room with a single bed. I blogged, occasionally, but it was nothing like the same. Worse, he wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. He never read a single word I wrote. I desperately wanted him to.

That was a distraction though, from the biggest single change. I was still messed up, certainly. My estranged granfather dying, the realisation that I was going to have to leave Royal Holloway, losing touch with most of my friends, all made it a difficult year. But apart from a few very black days, I wasn't depressed anymore. The process of becoming happier didn't just cost me my faith. It cost me this as well.

*****

So present day, I'm staring at this blog, feeling utterly disconnected. I don't know how to process any of the things that are happening to me and (this is very important) I FUCKING HATE every single thing I've written here for the last year or so.

I try so hard to get it back, to shake off this block, but I can't. On the train, by the beach, in the park, over and over again, I snatch so hard at every idea that hits me, try to pin them down and find some way of getting back to that place where I could just express myself and I can't. I cannot write a single word without instantly, instinctively criticising it. Too wanky, too blunt, too boring, too pretentious. Everyone will see right through that and smell the desperation coming off a girl who's lost her edge.

Even this post. Especially this post.

Why?

Because right at the heart of everything, is this one fear. When you strip away all the pretty words (which the meds did pretty well) and spiritual crisis (the meds took care of that one too) and even the depression itself (counselling, balls of steel, but yeah, the meds) the only real thing that's left is this one fear. Not a mental illness fear, a chemical imbalance fear or a religious fear. Just a me-fear.

I'm so so scared that I will fail. Why I didn't apply for drama school. Why I never try to lose weight despite the fact that sometimes I hate my body. Why I didn't go for Oxbridge. Why, on changing universities, I went for somewhere that asked far lower grades than the ones I actually have. Why it took me so long to acknowledge I was ill. Why I have never ever pursued any interest other than writing to any sort of challenging level. Why I stopped auditioning for plays as soon as there was a hint that I was out of my depth. Why I cannot, cannot write.

Deep down, on the most primal level I think I have, I'm convinced that, basically, I'm a twat. That if I was to dress snazzy, lose weight, have perfect hair, amass this wealth of knowledge on every conceivable subject, have impeccable taste in music, sing, act, work hard, be published... if I could be proved worthy in every possible area of my life, then I could be confident. But what if I'm not found worthy? What if I'm found wanting? Surely it's easier not to try?

It's the most ridiculous cliche. If I heard one of my friends say what I've just said it would break my heart, but I'd be furious. How could anyone genuinely believe that anyone expected them to be perfect? That it was better to atrophy than to attempt to improve? And yet... and yet.

*****

The man in black didn't love me so well. He didn't reach over to stroke my face, there was no heart to heart over french toast and diet cokes. What he said was horrible, and true, and I hate him for saying it because it's taken so long for me to realise it:

This is the only part of your life where you've ever felt like you've achieved, where you've actually done something you feel proud of. You feel like you've lost everything else you knew about yourself and if you lost the ability to write that would be the end of you. But you know what the saddest thing is? You're so scared of being shit you're actually gonna let it happen. Just like dropping out, just like every opportunity you've ever thrown away, every time you've been too lazy or scared or sad to get up and do something with your life. You'd rather never write again than write badly and have someone else think badly of you.

So end it, stop it, stop trying, give up, why don't you? What the fuck made you think you could do it anyway?

*****

What title do I give this? What snappy one-liner do I save for the finish line of the most uncomfortably, brutally honest thing I've ever written? How the hell do I end this?

I guess by saying that even though I don't want this to be my last post, I don't see how it can't be. For so long now I've been so unhappy with everything I've written for this site. Whether anyone reading picks up on that, I can't tell, I absolutely cannot be objective anymore. But now you know. Now the self-conscious writer is revealed. Now you can see exactly what I'm thinking when I try and put the world to rights.

It's horribly embarassing. But here's the silver lining: it's the feeling you get when you sit down and take a long, unforgiving look at yourself. No secrets. No excuses, no tiny-violined and artily worded railing against god, no stilted accounts of piss-ups and break-ups and falling apart. No poetry. No essay. No structure. No photos. No humorous similes or analogies about the G8 or student life. No fucking bullshit effort anything. Just writing exactly what I saw when I looked, and exactly what that means.


I take it back. If this is the last one ever then that's ok, because this one at least, I was a little bit proud of.

:)