ON WRITING
About two years ago, I dated someone who described the art of writing as low-hanging fruit. God, I must have really been short, I thought, if I could not find it within myself to catch said fruit. We don’t speak anymore, matters unrelated to fruits, but I didn’t write either for years. I hate that it isn’t their fault.
Writing had always been akin to home to me, where I went to lay my head at night when the world was finished with me for the day. Where the outside noise could pause, briefly, permitting me a chance to be something, feel something.
So when I didn’t write, I didn’t feel; not well, at least,not in the way therapists tell you is healthy or what psychology today would call adaptive.
I had missed it, writing, I missed making sense of the world. I missed being someone who could access themselves like that;who saw the world like that.
In March 2024, my therapist, she’s great, a petite woman with a bald head and way too much energy suggested, gently, that I may have ADHD.
In November, the year before, I started seeing someone, a different person from the fruit person, and I was all kinds of triggered. I was so triggered in fact that I had to write affirmations on my little sticky notes because I couldn’t access the sensible part of my brain anymore. I’ll tell you about them one day. They were Nigerian and curious about people in the way your colleague wants to hear all about your weekend on a Monday morning.
So you might be wondering what this has to do with my therapist and ADHD and the truth is, I don’t know either. However, this is a public article not hidden behind a paywall, so the best you could do is to stop mumbling and read the article quietly. It is all related, I promise.
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Anyway, my therapist let’s call her Magnolia, spent about a year helping me learn how to feel again and attempt the arduous journey to return home to myself. I hated it. Therapy is hard. Learning that your entire personality might instead be an intricate web of symptoms and coping mechanisms created to protect you from the big bad world finishing you didn’t help either.
I kicked and screamed, scratched on walls, and I cried. A lot. Finally, but only after tiring myself out, I accepted that maybe my body is not trying to hurt me, my friends really mean it when they say they love me and I can coexist with my grief in a way that allows me to stay alive.
It took time, and honestly, I am still fighting the voices. The ones that call me lazy. The ones that call me lacking. The ones that say that you are unlovable.
However, I am learning to introduce new voices. The ones that tell me I can always return home like the prodigal son. There is room for me here. My hobbies will still be waiting for me. My interests will not have outgrown me. Maybe, just maybe I can be tall enough to reach the low-hanging fruit of creative writing once again.
XoXo
Miss Tuitho
Did you miss me, because I missed you. Please clap and leave a comment and tell a friend to tell a friend that I am back.
