‘Writer’s Block’

Dear future Historian,

I could swear that I won’t make it. But why would I ever swear such a thing? It is funny what words are coming out of people’s mouths. Heavy words. Words that fall down on them like sticky honey, only to attract bees and… what am I even saying? (Have bees survived in your time?)

There is no way I will make the due date. The deadline. It feels kind of deadly actually. It’s interesting that our brains can’t even tell the difference between real danger and just stress.  It’s the same for your brain whether you are chased by a dinosaur or if you are running to catch a bus. Zero level of perspective. Yet these unreliable brains are the ones that helped us survive, conquer the world, make art… what am I even saying again? 

In a theoretical universe I might make it. Maybe there I don’t spend so much time freaking out over tasks that are totally easy for others. Maybe there I am not neurodiverse. Maybe there my mental health is not stopping me, and maybe there I know how to ask and receive help.

It would be nice if I do make it though. What if I don’t presuppose failure this time? I did quit many times so far, before I even failed; to make sure that I will keep intact in my mind the idea that ‘I didn’t fail… I just quit.’ It didn’t happen to me; I was the one in charge of the events. It happened by me. 

What if this time I try actively to make it instead? How would that look like? (It’s kind of annoying, my dear future Historian, that you know already if I will make it or not, it’s kind of ruining the necessary basis for a healthy relationship. That… and the time distance I guess.)

How would it look like? Well, I have already started about 12 stories that didn’t get any more than 100 words before I lost my interest on them.  So, it’s not very accurate that I am not trying enough. But my maximum was never enough. The burden of hidden disabilities I suppose. The embarrassment of the families. ‘I don’t know what went wrong with this one,’ they whisper when they think you can’t listen, I raised her/him the same as the other two, but s/he just refuse  to adjust to reality.

But we don’t live in the same reality, do we? Can they hear the neighbour’s tab  leaking at night? Or the clock’s tick tock from the living room? Do they get a headache from the sunlight, and a panic attack every time they drive? Do they stutter every time they need to ask for instructions? (Google save my life on that one.)

Here I should add some kind of audio-visual description or something, to make it more vivid. I could use the view from my window, though the buzz from the laptop doesn’t really let me concentrate on anything else. The Sun’s rays are coming and going, playing with the clouds, and messing with my attempts to focus. The view is astonishing from that window. I can see the Cathedral and the Theatre, and it has sunlight all day. 

I wrote a story for the Sun some years ago; and a girl that became friends with him. He was so surprised with the turning of events in human history. One moment people sacrifice other people every day in his name, and just some hundred years later - which is nothing for a star’s life span, so you’ll have to excuse him if he needs some extra time to adjust to the new reality - he is begging for just a girl to pay some attention to him.

I always stop to pay my respect to the Sun, when he sets. I want to make sure that he knows someone is waiting for him tomorrow.

One day I was walking back home up the hill. Exhausted. Overstimulated. Drowned in the idea that I can’t make it. In every step, I subconsciously added all the previous steps again. Step 131 became 261 in my head. Till the Sun started playing peek-a-boo again. And suddenly I realised the burden that I was adding to myself, with each step. And I started a new . Playing peek-a-boo with the Sun. And it worked. I was home with renewed energy, in no time. 

Maybe this time I will make it. Maybe. Just maybe.