I am not sure what happened exactly. All of the word-welding gears inside me have rusted together. I feel their driving engine groaning quietly from deep within me, trying feebly to force the cogs back into production, but my body lays dormant, ignoring the struggle. I read "Eat, Pray, Love" last month, and as much flack as that may get me, as lame and "rom-com" as that story may seem, I truly loved it. I was moved and inspired by it. It's probably what got that throughly buried engine inside me to attempt to revive my words at all. It reminded me of the beauty of creative non-fiction. It reminded me of my passion for it. It reminded me of the evening when someone who I respect very much, by a feeble car reading light in the dark parking lot of a local park, read a piece of non-fiction that I had written. It reminded me that as he finished it he turned to me, and said with so much sincerity, "this is what you're supposed to do" (a statement that I hold right against my heart as the best compliment I have ever received).
But oh, it is so hard to oil these groaning gears. It is so hard to lift my heavy hands to paper. With much tumult in my life in the last few months it is so difficult to clear the fog that has settled into my mind, to pull my thoughts together into something as concrete as words. (If you will forgive a second analogy) My internal writer, the usually constant voice that weaves my experiences into narration has grown so tired lately. She has curled up for the sad, cold, lonely months of January and February. She is sleepy beneath a blanket of those dark winter feelings and she is so uninterested in climbing from her downy shelter. Beneath that cozy layer of soft fresh snow, she has left that most poignant of silences reserved only for still winter nights.
But today there was some sun and a little breeze. Literally, but I think probably figuratively as well, because look, here are words trickling onto keys. And though the troubles of my personal and familial situation still surround me as much as ever, I know that I (or my writer-me) can't hibernate forever. I can't leave the machine begging to produce and really find peace in my mind. I can't sleep through my days without feeling like the daylight went by wasted.
So here I am. Not writing about any hardships or life experiences directly, but rather writing about not writing. But I am content for tonight to know that there are still words willing to come when I make the effort to call, content to know I have put words on this page.