Three Years Fallow

If it’s not Christina’s World I don’t want it

Usually when I see my therapist (1 of 2) she has me close my eyes and tap opposite shoulders while I place myself back in the same rooms as the worst things that have ever happened to me. e.g., the delivery room where my mom’s anesthesiologist accidentally administered the epidural into her bloodstream; the ugly dorm shower with a polyester curtain where things were done to my body while I said “no”, etc., etc. I cry and she asks me where I feel it and it’s always my chest, hammering, and then occasionally it’s my hands, too, because they are crossed over my torso for so long (losing blood in my fingers from the tapping). 

Today I said I didn’t feel like tapping. I told her instead that I haven’t done anything I’m really (independently) creatively proud of in three years. Writing-wise. A long time ago, when I worked at Man Repeller, my work was me. I attached my identity wholly to the things I created there. It was my purpose and meaning and driving force. When I lost it in 2020, I was sent into a wild spin from which I’ve never stabilized. 

For three whole years I have been estranged from my own creativity. And there’s such shame in that. The pieces I am able to dredge up now feel uncertain and cautious. I expel in gasps. Dusty ones. I’m not sure I even know my own writerly voice anymore, which is something (way back when) people used to say echoed my voice in life so clearly. It was a point of pride. 

I’ve hacked myself to bits during the pandemic. (Worth noting that I was also hacked.) My pieces have rotted, I am bitter and cynical. I’ve become a legless critic. A fucking misanthrope.

Now I am in the midst of a very painful loss. A lot of things were unearthed. It’s left me feeling stripped and silly, like things should be so markedly different when you’re 30 years old, and they’re not. (This is something I already felt, but now it’s keener.)

I know the answer for me is not to attach my heart and soul and spirit so fully to my work again. What pays my bills cannot be a mirror reflection of me. In a way, that was crazy-making. Offering my guts to the world became a drug where validations were pure pleasure and criticisms felt like cuts. I say this from a place of awareness about what I can and cannot hack. I don’t have the constitution. My admiration for those who do knows no bounds.

My therapist told me to develop a practice. Something to bring me back to life. So I’m resurrecting this old Substack, and with it will come more elements of me (just me). I won’t challenge myself to show up smart or incisive on a different topic every week, I’ll offer something small. Sometimes it will be dumb and funny. Other times it’ll be more thoughtful. Then I’ll offer things to read and do and buy and see from my limited vantage point. Just like a good friend would, only digitally. It starts Sunday. Happy H-ween.

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Every other night my body wakes me up because parts or one or both of my limbs have gone numb. I lift myself with my abdominals and shake out the dead part of me until circulation starts to flow back into it. For 5 seconds I’m genuinely panicked, thinking this will actually be the time my arm doesn’t prickle back to life.

I’m sure finding my voice again will take something more like 5 months. But it’ll look largely the same. There will be fits and starts, (me not believing it will ever come back, or if it does, I might hate it). But once I feel it again, I’m sure it will be like it was never gone in the first place. 

Speak soon,

Amalie