Inertia
About four years ago, I quit writing.
I know it sounds dramatic, but it wasn’t. It started as a side effect of my crushing depression. Creating became less rewarding. The dopamine dried up. The leftover crusts morphed into apathy.
Before long, I was my own worst critic. My work didn’t hold a lamp to the stuff I read from literary notables and my peers, while the line that divides both groups began to blur. It seemed there was always an announcement of publishing deals, literary prizes, essays in international publications, and news desk roles at international desks. And here I was, my tire stuck in the sandy roads that lead to Lekki beaches, spinning and spinning in a rut, a snake biting its own tail in an infinite loop.
I soon started getting anxiety attacks every time it was time to write. This is not a great place to be, especially when you write for a living.
It wasn’t writer’s block. You have to consider yourself a legitimate, honest-to-god writer to have that. Imposter’s block might be considered more accurate because I still wrote. Email campaigns, newsletters, content strategies, pitch documents, social media copy, and the other schlep of my trade. But my heart was absent. Writing takes up the majority of my day. I do not desire to write creatively or reflectively in my journal at night. I was all wrung out and fresh of juice. At best, I was a mercenary wordsmith, a sellsword for hire, hacking and slicing at empty Google doc pages.
Fiyin said not to feel too bad about it. It’s the writing of the season, she says. She believes it’ll contribute to my craft in unseen ways. I took comfort in that for a while. Then the resentment rekindled, like a stove with fresh wicks. What craft is it contributing to? WHERE IS THE CRAFT? WHAT SHOULD I WRITE?
I’m looking for inspiration, I say to myself. I look for it everywhere. I look for classic movies crafted by Francis Ford Coppola or Stanley Kubrick on bootleg websites, my mind as haphazard as the dodgy pop-ups these illicit websites throw at me. I flick through the new Marvel money-grabbers on Disney, trying to find something shining back at me in The Mandalorian’s helmet. I skim through other people’s writing. Maybe their spark will jumpstart mine. Or maybe in music. But nothing moves. Nothing forms. I know that the problem wasn’t material. There was just something broken inside.
ADHD patients (I cringe at this usage, but when the illness has been as debilitating as it has been for me, I believe I’ve earned the title of a patient) suffer from task paralysis. I’ve found this phrase apt because, in my experience, it’s been characterized by an inability to move myself to begin a task, no matter how hard I will my body to. My mind spins like a deranged washing machine on some days and Cocaine Bear on others, so it’s not a lack of energy. I’m just unable to beam this energy in any one direction.
Like its equally demonic cousin, sleep paralysis, you’re awake and aware of what you must do to escape this nightmare. But your brain has drenched your muscles in paralyzing chemicals designed to render you immobile, preventing you from acting the Tom Cruise stunts from your dreams while in bed.
You’re Sandra Bullock in that space movie, and your motivation is as dead as George Clooney while the world continues to spin beneath you. Your paralysis worsens when you realize that inertia has locked you in a death spiral, sending you crashing toward your worst fears of failure, ignominy and mediocrity. In some ways, I need that stimulus to get off my ass. In other ways, it’s like fighting the fire of my poor mental health with gasoline.
Try as I may, I can’t will my mind to work. It’s paralyzed by thoughts of knowing that the things I create will never be as great as the things I read, that I’ll never consider the things I write worthy of another pair of eyes. The world abounds with the works of genius. Michelangelo’s work sits rightfully on the ceiling of the beautiful Sistine Chapel, and the James Webb Space Telescope, the climax of a combination of the best of mankind’s genius, lazily drifts around the sun, one million miles from this troubled planet. My work has no right to stand beside these creations.
Bo Burnham, a comedian and songwriter, put out his work, Inside, a Netflix special resulting from a lockdown that had all of us reeling like the drunk uncle at your cousin’s wedding. It’s a naked, raw, personal comedy musical that forgets its purpose and becomes too real. Bo jokes about his struggles with his mental health and how they affect his life.
Bo Burnham’s pieces consist of theatrical clownery and buffoonery that ranges from cringe to fucking hilarious. On the one hand, I think wilding out is what he needs to keep his tectonics stable, away from the grinding edge. On the other hand, I see through his eyes that they are a cry for help, and in his antics, I hear my own screams.
In one of the bits in his one-man crew production, he solemnly acknowledges that he had been working on the Inside project for a year. Disgusted with his lack of progress due to his failing mental health, he smacked his thigh repeatedly in intense self-flagellation.
And there, I felt it. I have “slapped my thighs” in ways I shouldn’t have, mentally and physically. It often happens enough to wonder if my DNA had me hardwired to seek self-destruction constantly. Self-hate is an interesting phenomenon. You’re both the assaulter and the assaulted. The snake bites its tail again. The self-deprecation that comes from being stuck in limbo. The self-deprecation that feeds the restless, anxious monster in my chest.
***
I talked to my doctor about my anxiety. She asked me to describe how I felt. I tell her it’s hard to describe. I try to describe the feeling of heavy weights pulling at my chest and my brow, even though my brain tells me there’s nothing to worry about.
It’s nothing, but it’s everything. It’s in how I breathe, always shallow, like I’m trying not to use all the oxygen. It’s in the urgent palpitation of my heart, like a firecracker in a tin of Danish cookies. I’m only reminded of it when my thighs start to ache. It’s in tapping my left leg repeatedly until it takes a mind of its own, bouncing of its own volition, buzzing with the intensity of a swarm of dragonflies. I bring myself to breathe, still my thoughts and my leg. It works. It stops bouncing. I’m calm.
For four minutes.
The doctor sighs and doubles my dosage of divalproex sodium.
