Silence

Lately I'm fighting a lot of creative silence. There are things I want to say, but the words are being too timid to leap out onto the screen or into the air. Part of the silence has to do with a lot of inner changes I'm going through due to my counseling. Part of it is that my life is stressful. Part of it is my depression.

I try not to let the silence win. I accept it, open it up, realize that silence is sometimes necessary, realize that this, too, will pass and I'll soon be back in the thick of things.

It's hard in these moments, however, because I can't help feel as though I'm speaking only to myself, when I do speak.

And it matters to me what other people think. I don't write, or podcast, for fame or glory but I wouldn't mind having some. Heck, all I really want is for someone to occasionally pay attention to me. Not all the time. Not in a weird, obsessive way. But just…sometimes. Knowing that I have an audience. Knowing that another human being wants to know what I think – that's a powerful thing.

I know to devote myself to my art and my writing, I'm going to need to get over this need for feedback / response / recognition. I'm sitting with it, knowing how hard it feels, recognizing what parts are inside of me irrevocably and sadly – what parts of it are brain chemistry rather than Truth.

I refuse to accept that my brain chemistry is truth. Life is true, beauty is true. Depression is a foul plague of shadows, and it isn't at all true. I have had my share of grief and sadness, but do I deserve to be this sad all the time? No, I don't.

So, I answer back the brain chemistry with the shot-in-the-dark chemicals they give me to make me more happy, more compliant to social convention, more attentive to things that I otherwise find boring. I'm here. I'm trying.

I'm turning over all the boxes and trying to sort through them, throwing away that which is not useful or important anymore.

There just doesn't seem to be enough time to do what I want to do and what I must do and what I should do.

Let me quote a science fiction TV show. "I stand between the candle and the star." Between the last hope of light and the source of all light.

And I refuse to let the Shadow do me in.

May it always be so.