I still don’t feel any emotional resonance with my fictional writing.
Way back when I was a teenager taking creative writing, I went through something difficult and my teacher advised me to write it out in a story. So I did. And it was deeply therapeutic. I know from experience what writing is capable of doing for me when I can immerse myself in it.
Now that I’m 38 and I’ve survived horrors I never imagined … I can’t. The emotion sits frozen inside while I mechanically type the words.
The fact that what I went through last summer caused me to drop 20lbs in two months was a physical trauma, and even without violence I was still scared for my health and safety. The damage was real. It’s been four months since then, but I’ve only gained back 8lbs of what I lost. I don’t feel safe yet. I feel like I’m waiting for more bad things to happen that I’ll have to keep it together to deal with despite secretly falling apart inside. Again.
The thing about therapeutic writing is that you need to be healed to a certain point for it to work. I’m not there yet.
So we need to be patient.
Time is something that can never be forced. Time feels like eternity while it’s happening but is always a microsecond in retrospect.
Emotional resonance is something that can’t be forced, it has to flow. So, until I’m able to feel again, we’ll let the words be as stilted as they need to be.
By Autumn Rain 