My creative process is a bomb defusal in a crowded room where the people keep wandering by to peek over my shoulder.
My mother cringes as I touch the red wire, so I drop the pliers and pick up a screwdriver. Left, left, left — until the screw wiggles and I hear my old professors sigh in unison — right, right, right.
I pore through the pages of a tear-stained manual but can’t concentrate amidst the impatient chatter of an Instagram following. I press a button on a whim and brace myself. A gasp. A cry. But nothing happens.
For a moment I think this might be luck, but as the voices die I hear it in the silence: tick, tick, tick. The trickle of time running out.
I check the manual. There is a whisper. I whip the book to the floor. A muffled clatter. A tut and a groan. I pick it up again and get back to work.
I am the shadow of my motherhood. I am what comes after the stroller, so that you already know the shape of me before you’ve really looked.
I am cast with the waking of the sun, and warp around demands much bigger than the mouths that make them, stretching and shrinking as needed.
So please excuse my melodramatics and the volume of my voice when I talk about politics, science, poetry, video games, or anything but my kids. I’m just trying to cast the shape of myself.
I’ve had depression and anxiety for a very long time, but there’s always been a good reason to push it aside. To tell myself that I’ll be alright as long as I keep moving. That I don’t need help. That it’s “normal.” That I can handle it.
I’m sure I’m not the only person who has had those beliefs shattered in the past year. My existential crises suddenly found themselves with some very real material, and my coping mechanisms — social events, going out by myself, getting someone to watch the kids — went flying out the window.
To be honest, it didn’t feel like what I was experiencing was even related to the pandemic, and in some ways it wasn’t — my mental health wasn’t great to begin with after all — but whether I acknowledged the pressure bearing down on me or not, it was still there. In the way I couldn’t take my children to the park or to the grocery store. In the way I hadn’t been away from them for more than half an hour in several months. In the masks I saw hanging from rear-view mirrors as I walked down the street. In the way that walking those streets had become a sick strategy game — weaving back and forth or meandering blocks out of the way so that I didn’t have to go within two metres of anyone else.
I felt it in my core even if I didn’t acknowledge it. I stopped doing anything. I stopped being anything. I wanted to just stop altogether.
So I got help. For the first time. And just… thank God. Why the hell didn’t I do this sooner?
Please, whether it’s been a lifelong thing or it’s a new thing… if you feel empty, overly anxious, meaningless, like your entire self is about to implode… tell someone. Preferably your doctor. Look for community resources if you don’t have access to paid therapy and can’t afford it. Online therapy. Just, ask for help. I promise you deserve it. (For the record I signed up for a government-funded online therapy clinic and used a free CBT app called Woebot while I was waitlisted.)
And if you are in crisis, please call a crisis support line or stop by your emergency department. Your life matters and I swear you are strong enough to get through this. You just haven’t been given the tools yet. You’ve been climbing a mountain with your bare hands and you’ve still gotten this far. Imagine where you’d get if someone gave you some climbing equipment (and taught you how to use it).
Anyway. Therapy and mental health supports aside (but seriously, access them if you think you need them), I thought it was about time for an update.
Even before the pandemic, I was really struggling with my creativity. Not so much a writer’s block, just a lack of passion for… well… anything. Writing included. This of course, caused extra anxiety as I thought to myself… will I ever be creative again? Will I ever feel again? Despite the way we romanticize mental illness, that poetic melancholy or artistic moodiness, it is NOT conducive to creativity. I am a much better (and definitely productive) creator when I am mentally well.
While I was recovering, and within the pressures of parenting during a pandemic, the only thing I’ve consistently found time for has been poetry. It’s short, I can write and edit it on my phone, and it’s cathartic as hell. I’ve actually started a poetry Instagram with the tag @amnotpoetry. You can see the feed over there —> I’ll do some poetry posts to update any new ones to the site and file them under the Poetry section up there. ^
I also quit twitter for now, because who needs that negativity?
An example of the kind of stuff I’m doing over on insta
As for what comes next… well, I’m trying to take it easy for now in terms of setting goals, but I AM working on a few stories again. I’d also still like to work on finishing the voice recordings of Ganymede, but ultimately that comes down to finding a period of time and a space where I can consistently create a quiet enough environment. Worst case, it’ll happen as restrictions from the pandemic ease off and I can book a space. The focus right now is on creation, and eventually the debate of going the webfiction route again, or trying for traditional publishing. But that is a ways off (though I’d love to hear what you think!)
I’ll try to do more consistent blog posts. I have one mostly written already about media that’s kept me sane and helped me deal with my depression over the past year. Books, podcasts, video games, etc. So stay tuned.
Anyway, I’m back. It’ll take some time for me to fall into a regular habit of posting, but for now, I am just so ecstatic to be creating again. I hope everyone out there is doing alright and taking care of themselves as best they can. It’s okay to take a break, sometimes just getting through the day is enough. We’ve got this, one day at a time.
I’ve gotten nothing done. I had a series I fully intended to write, multiple things I have talked about recording and releasing… and the bare truth here is that I simply haven’t done it.
I have a pocket full of excuses — I have two kids, a schedule that leaves me with around an hour to do things for myself each day (that means after-kids-go-to-bed chores, homeschool organization, writing, reading/watching/gaming, self-care, time with my husband), a noisy apartment not conducive to recording.
And while those things don’t help, the real problem is me.
This isn’t writer’s block — I have a million ideas squirreled away — it’s something much deeper. It’s not this lockdown, though again I’m sure it isn’t helping. This is a problem I’ve been struggling with for years now that I do everything possible not to talk about. Something I’m not even sure I have to words to talk about.
It’s a mingling of existential dread, self-loathing, and a dearth of mental space that has culminated in an inability to… imagine? To fantasize? To allow my brain to exist anywhere that isn’t this moment, with these restrictions, and all of the terrifying possibilities of what could come next. It means that I struggle to enjoy stories, especially stories with peril or suffering. It means I can barely read, can barely watch, and can barely create.
I feel lost and purposeless. Everything around me seems meaningless. I’ve lost the how and the why that use to push me through challenges like this.
And yes, it is not lost on me that this is a mental health issue. I’m working on it. It’s not an optimal time for getting medical attention but I’m looking into it.
For now I’m focusing on taking care of myself. On trying to remember how to enjoy things again. I’ve been playing Nier: Automata… and while I feel guilty using my one hour a day to game, it’s also one of the first things I’ve actually gotten enjoyment from. Some days it helps hold me together.
I want to write again. At least, I think I do. But until I can remember why I did it in the first place, until I can remember what it’s like to be able to daydream, until I get help… I guess I’m on hiatus.
Thanks to everyone who has read my work or has taken a moment and read this. I think I just needed to put it out there, and also to explain to the people following the blog where the hell I’ve been.
I will come back from this, somehow. Even if I don’t believe those words right now, I have to say them. I will be back with new stories and new worlds and maybe a renewed love for this one.
This is for the moms whose vacations were taken in the aisles of grocery stores, at the tables of cafés, in efficient trips to the shopping mall or gym. Whose nights off meant eating out or leaving the kids with Grandma. Who see no end in sight, no relief, no breaks, no peace. Who hate to complain ’cause they signed up for this right? It’s a sacrifice they have to make and damn, but they’re good at those.
This is for the people who’ve found all exits blocked, trapped in homes that threaten to consume them. With partners or parents or whoever it may be that beat and belittle and go off like bombs leaving nothing but ringing silence in their wake.
This is for everyone whose schedules, consistency, and routine were medical requirements abandoned in the crossfire. Kids and adults panicking, lashing, crumbling because suddenly their needs come last.
For Asian communities forced to carry a weight that isn’t theirs.
For those without homes and those with no one else to share them with.
For those who can’t work and those who can’t stop.
For those stuck with their families and those kept away.
For adults and children with mental health conditions, or disabilities, or everyday worries and fears.
For seniors, and in-betweeners.
For health care workers and delivery drivers, small business owners, grocery store staff, the helpers and the helped.
This is for you. Whatever that’s worth.
It isn’t a promise that things will be okay because I don’t know. I suppose it’s a wish — a midnight thought, an hour (probably more) of lost sleep imagining I could reach you.
All I can say is: I will do my best to see you. You deserve to be seen. Your needs deserve to be met.
I hope you find safety and peace and justice and connection wherever you are.
And if you’re lucky, I hope you find a good night’s rest.
each of us pilfering and pinching, one from the other, back and forth and around again in a merry-go-round heist
our children plucking the hours from our pockets and the sleep from our beds, the heat from our meals and our drinks and our kisses —
not that it keeps us from stealing them anyway
after all, you and I are just as guilty as they: every breathing moment an ill-gotten prize, an impossible debt we never intended to pay
our guilt evidenced in the tipping of toes and whispers in the dark, in quiet tears and the protests of little voices
every moment we call ours is one taken from them every second I claim mine means one less for you these very words counted and hoarded, concealed around a corner while the authorities call my name
they are written with borrowed minutes, a fleeting currency that dissolves before it can ever be repaid
that measures the exact distance required for a wild animal to turn from deadly to cute.
It is the kind of distance that plays tricks on the eye — blurring harsh edges, leaving only pointillistic impressions that tickle the most palatable of memories.
It is the size of scribbles coalescing into sense,
kitchen knives mistaken for wooden spoons.
Ours is the distance of i n e b r i a t i o n.
An astigmatic blur bloating e’s into o’s and misjudging lies lines.
The time it would take to travel from
Point “me” to Point “you“
is comparable to that satisfying span of autumn and summer before we begin to pine for the pleasures of the other.
Or the time it takes a new mother to break that promise she made to herself:
“Never again.”
It is the breadth of forgetfulness, of longing, of doubt,
Amy Notdorft 