A Year Without Writing: An Admission

I haven’t written anything in a year.  Not on this blog, not creatively, not privately in a journal for my own secret purposes.  Except notes taken on my cell phone for future songs or stories--notes like “Jail bus” and “I can’t decide if it’s kindness, or dogs, that make the world go ‘round”--there hasn’t been anything.  Which is strange for me.  In my younger years I would fill one journal a month; in my young adult years writing plays and stories was how I processed and related to the world; in my post-college years having an internet blog was the only way I knew how to write and share my writing (and in the earlier times of internet blogs I didn’t know how public it really was, but now it’s out there, forever, sweet lord).  Writing is a thing which I would love to make money at and be known as doing, sure, but it's also a thing which I have always done, which I have had to do, which I identify as an intrinsic part of who I am and how I stay sane.

Until now. This is the first thing I have written since I consciously took a break.  I have considered sharing this but have always abstained because it felt too personal and too “waah waah, look at me” and once you do it you can’t take it back but THE THING IS I don’t think I can get on to the next part until I do this and someone, somewhere, is having this experience in their own way, and if I talk about it then maybe it will help them or even just help normalize something that we silently feel conflict and shame about.  Do you know what I’m saying?  Sharing, you guys. It’s about sharing.

Right.  So.  Writing is something I have compulsively done my whole life whether it’s good or not and then a year ago I stopped.  Because I have anxiety.  Unroll the banner and drop the confetti, everyone.  I have anxiety.  Are you surprised?  I was.  Three and a half years ago I decided to take the unglamorous road to a better life and started going to therapy.  Not because anything was “wrong” or I needed to “fix” something (ideas I encounter a lot from people) but because, like everyone, I have rough edges and dark corners and unhealed parts and unheard parts and parts I want to understand better and feelings I want to process and things I want to forgive and other things I want to love more and growing I want to do.  It’s just, you know, life.  I want to live the best life that I can, and getting out of my own way and going to therapy is a part of reaching for the stars and following my dreams. You should go.  You deserve it.

(I hate this right now.  This is the most boring thing I’ve ever done.  Are we done yet?)

Growth isn’t easy and doesn’t always feel good and requires constant reflection and honestly and it is also EXHAUSTING.  When I first started going to therapy I felt like I had taken on another job.  I was working all the time: the processing, patience, being intentional, filtering self judgement, compassionate action, blah blah blah. SOME times I just wanted to be blissfully fucked up and float through my life.  But I had started and I couldn’t unsee that things could be better.  It was like a mean trick I had played on myself.  

There are many things to say about this experience, but the point right now is that when I started consciously working on my life it meant I had to really know myself, which I thought I was previously doing a good job at.  But there were things about myself that I didn’t know, or miss-identified and the process of getting in there and doing the real “work” highlighted this.  One of the things I didn’t know was that I am an anxious person.  That my baseline of anxiety runs very high, and occasionally spikes from there.  That I developed coping mechanisms to get through my life this way, and that I looked very poorly on myself because I was this way.  I did not know I was anxious.  I thought I was defective.  I knew that anxiety disorders existed and that they were for other people.  They were not for me, surely I did not have one.  No, I was just a defective person who was doing a bad job at life.  I was stupid.  I was lazy.  I had a broken brain.  It took me about six months of learning what anxiety is, how it works and what anxiety disorders mean to begin identifying it in myself.  Part of what made it hard was that I thought identifying myself as having an anxiety disorder meant I was actually giving myself an excuse at doing a shitty job in life.  That it was totally reasonable for other people to have them, and for them it was real, but for me it was cheating.  It took a lot of education in brain chemistry, a lot of trusting medical professionals, and a lot of self care to admit/accept that I have an anxiety disorder.  

I started acclimating myself to the idea by telling people “well, you know, I am a very anxious person”.  I tested the waters in conversation with friends who’d known me for varying lengths of time.  They all had the same responses: “You THINK?” “Are you just now realizing this?” and “yes, Carlee.  I know.”.  

Imagine my surprise!  Everyone knew this about me but I didn’t know it about myself?!  How is that possible?  The truth is that now I cannot imagine not knowing I have anxiety but to begin with I had to be told.  And to begin with I had to get comfortable with the idea that anxiety disorders are not something you bring upon yourself.  And to begin with I had to forgive myself for not knowing I had one.  

As I eased into a life identifying as an anxious person things started clicking.  The past started making sense.  Things I hated about myself became understandable, manageable objects.  Once a day, when I thought I was dying, I could finally say “No.  This is your anxiety”.  Do you know what it is like to every day think you are dying because your brain and your body are doing something you don’t understand but you are too embarrassed about to share?  It’s really tiring and lonely.  As time went on I began to identify that I could live with my anxiety and that demanding it go away was not reasonable.   Then I saw that navigating through a life with anxiety was possible, and learning how to do it would make me feel better.  Then I started to learn how to know that things would be ok.

I was 28 years old and I did not previously know that things would be ok.  Ever.  I did not trust the outcome of anything being ok.  That is also scary and lonely and exhausting.  But I started to change it.  THAT process was one of the most joyful, liberating experiences of my life.

So there I was, plugging away in my life with therapy and work and friends and cool adult stuff, being an anxious person who was learning how to be an anxious person.  The better I felt the more my anxiety bothered me.  It became more and more clear how much my anxiety was ruling the way I made choices and navigated my life.  My anxiety was in charge and the more I got hyped on having a healthy, adjusted life the more I became intolerant of the anxiety dictating everything about it.  It became incredulous.  It became unacceptable.  The harder and harder I worked to be a balanced, self loving person the more my anxiety annoyed me.  Because it was in the way.  After years of working, I started to see the degree to which I can control my success and happiness and the degree to which the anxiety will be an obstacle.  There was only so much I could do.  Neither my therapist nor I believed medication was the first answer for anything so we kept pounding the pavement; processing and developing coping strategies.  

Over time I laid a very strong foundation for myself.  I was achieving more.  I was feeling good.  I was looking good.  I was making declarations like “I want to be a professional sports mascot!” and knowing I would follow through if granted access to a furry suit.  I was playing music. I was all up in my one big life and feeling mostly really pumped about it.

Then it was this time last year.  In the fall of 2013 my life looked like this:  The giraffe and I were home owners who were paying our bills.  We were planning for the future.  I was singing in two bands.  I had a job I loved and had been promoted and had a business card, like a legitimate grown up professional person.  I had agents in four cities sending me auditions.  I had been cast as the voice of a new character in a Nintendo game.  I was getting ready to shoot a part in a movie with Reese Witherspoon, directed by someone who was about to win an Oscar.  I WAS DOING IT.  My life was the best it had been up to that point.  All the things I wanted were happening.  I was fulfilled.  I felt successful.  

And yet at least once a week I was immobilized.  I would shake and sweat and cry involuntarily and couldn’t see straight and my speech would slur.  I couldn’t put my socks on in the morning.  I couldn’t answer an email about a meeting.  I couldn’t leave the office at work.  I couldn’t remember what day it was.  I couldn’t get off the bus at my stop (not a metaphor). 

And that is how I knew.  My life was exactly how I wanted it to be.  I’d been working diligently on managing my anxiety for two and half years.  And it was not enough.  I could not beat it with hard work or having the best life.  And by that point my life was so good that allowing my anxiety, through all my best efforts, to get in my way did not feel acceptable any longer.  All the questions like “if I just do ______ maybe it will get better?” had been answered and the answer was no.  

I slogged through the next two months knowing what I had to do but not pulling the trigger.  I thought my partner, my therapist, my doctor, my community would be disappointed in me.  Finally, in January, I told them: I think I need to try medication.  Instead of disappointment I was met with support and agreement.  “You are not putting a band aid on anything,” they reassured me, “you are giving yourself another tool”.  Still, I felt uncertain.  Making the choice to be a medicated person came with a lot of fears, one being that it would make me numb, change me, turn me into a different person.  We’ve heard it a thousand times.  The biggest fear was that I would lose my ability to be creative.  I mulled this over with the doctors for a long time, concluding eventually that for me the risk was worth it.  I had to at least try.  I decided that if taking medication to help with my anxiety made it harder to write, eventually I would learn to write in a different way.  I decided having a healthy life was more important.  So I started medication.  And I stopped writing.

My experience managing my anxiety with diligent work and medication is only my experience.  But for me, adding medication has not changed me as a person.  I am not numb, I am not detached.  It has unequivocally aided me in the experience of living in the moment and being my best self.  It lowers the level of anxiety I navigate through everyday.  It doesn’t make it go away, but it reinforces that I will be ok.  I stopped writing by choice because I didn’t want to force it.  I will admit that I tried to come back to it a few times, and it was always hard.  I allowed myself to walk away from it, saying “try again later”.  I did not punish myself for not knowing how to write; I just let it sit there and exist. 

I feel like now I am ready to get in there again.  Does my writing sound the same as it did before?  Does it happen as easily?  Are my ideas as good?  My jokes as funny?  My self deprocation as relatable?  I really don’t know.  But it doesn’t matter to me.  I trust that it will fine.  It will be fine.

Because I feel so full of life that sometimes I want to vomit and hug people until their heads pop off.  Because I still cry when I am happy and when I am sad.  Because I am thinking less about my expectations for success and more about how to have a beautiful, full life.  Because when things get hard I know eventually they will be ok.  Because I (mostly) let myself make mistakes.  Because I put my socks on in the morning.  

I couldn’t get on to the next thing until I put that out there.  Thank you for listening.