For a long time, writing was one of the easiest places for me to disappear into.
I could sit down with an idea, meet a character, build a world, and suddenly hours were gone. Writing wasn’t simply something I did. It was part of who I was.
Which makes it difficult to admit that I’ve had a hard time picking it back up.
Over the last several years, life has felt like one loss followed by another. My health changed. I lost people I loved, pets who were family, jobs, friendships, stability, and pieces of the life I thought I would have.
Every time things seemed to settle, something else happened.
Eventually, survival started taking up a lot of space.
And creativity needs space.
I don’t think I understood that for a long time.
I would look at my unfinished stories and wonder why I couldn’t just sit down and write them. I still had ideas. I still loved my characters. I still thought about their worlds and imagined conversations between them.
So why couldn’t I write?
That question came with guilt.
If I was really a writer, shouldn’t I be writing?
There are so many messages directed at writers telling us to push through. Write every day. Create a routine. Stop waiting for inspiration. Sit down and do the work.
There is value in discipline, but I’ve also learned that sometimes the problem isn’t discipline.
Sometimes you’re tired.
Not the kind of tired that disappears after a good night’s sleep.
The kind that comes from spending years dealing with grief, uncertainty, depression, and starting over.
Writing asks us to reach inside ourselves and pull something out. Sometimes I simply didn’t have anything left to give.
And perhaps the hardest part was that losing writing felt like losing another part of myself.
I had already lost enough.
I didn’t want to lose this too.