We’ve been in The Netherlands for over a week now and I’ve spent much of it decompressing. Undergoing a release from the most intensely stressful few days before we actually arrived here. Remember when I wrote this? Well, that was nothing. Covid yanked the pressure switch up a notch, for everyone around the world really, but the timing was such that the switch got yanked just around our departure date.
It’s not like I haven’t been writing, because I have. Just not here.
Little poems have come to me in fragments, repeating sentences in my brain like a bird knocking on the inside of my head, desperate to be let out. They aren’t necessarily good poems but the good thing about my current stage of life is that I’ve started to care a bit less. I still seek affirmation, but that is now infused with a healthy dose of not trying to please absolutely everybody, all of the time. This feels intensely liberating.
I’d like to talk about a feeling that is quite difficult to articulate, so forgive any rambling while I get there. My brain is not firing on all cylinders lately, and so finding the words is harder. It takes longer. This is hugely frustrating for a writer. Or any creative really. I feel a bit useless.
Like when someone designs a teapot, an item which is meant to make and pour your tea. But then when you try and actually pour the tea out, the spout doesn’t work properly, so the hot tea goes everywhere but where it’s supposed to go – in the cup. Your hands are burnt from the hot water and it’s a huge frustrating mess. Because what is the point of a teapot that doesn’t make tea properly? I’m that teapot at the moment.
So many feelings, but so difficult to express them. They sit bundled up beneath her skin, like flies trapped against a window. Like a tangle of white cords, with nowhere to plug into. Is this how non-writers feel? What do they do with these feelings, if they don’t write them down? Do they disappear back into the body, like a pimple that isn’t popped? Poison sent back down into the self again, because the carrier does not have the means to release it.
It feels like we’ve reached a phase in this pandemic where we have nothing much to say to each other. We started out all cocky and optimistic – things were a novelty. Let’s bake guys! Let’s exercise! Help others! Share memes! But with the end of the long Easter weekend, everything just feels extremely…meh.
We’re starting to get on each others’ nerves. We’ve watched all the things we wanted to. Read all our good books. Work may be trickling in, or not at all, and we’re starting to worry about what the future holds. And then enter home schooling, which began for me today, bringing with it a whole other set of frustrations and challenges.