I didn’t hear you. I was too busy listening to the voices in my head.

So I got back yesterday from my week away. And I’m hesitating to write this post, because while I had a fabulous time in many ways, I was also fighting monsters all week. And the monsters are epic, and it’s very hard not to fight them. I experimented some more with my monster book, and it didn’t go so well. I still have a long, long way to go with all of this.

There were twenty of us in a house in Derbyshire. Twenty wonderful people, I should add – among them some of my favourite people in the world, some very close friends, some people I only get to see for this one week each year. But – twenty people in a house for a whole week. This is the kind of thing I’m scared of anyway, but after the year I’ve had, a year in which my confidence in my ability to do anything, and particularly to interact with other people successfully, has been horribly dented? The concept was terrifying. I didn’t really believe it was going to happen until I got to the airport where I was meeting people – I didn’t pack until the morning I was leaving (and forgot so much stuff), didn’t sleep the night before, left terribly late. Avoidance syndrome in all its full-blown, shaking-in-my-boots glory. Yeah, it was bad.

It didn’t help that I was constantly trying to talk myself out of my fear, telling myself that I’d done this before, that I’d met most of the people I’d be sharing a house with before, and once I got there it would be fun. Now, I know that this doesn’t work (I’ve known for ages that it doesn’t work; I’ve recently had it spelled out in so many words, thanks to Havi, and now I actually get that it doesn’t work) but it’s hard to stop doing it. I’m only slowly working on the alternative to trying to talking myself out of things, which is to say, “okay, I’m scared. Hi, fear, what are you after?” It’s hard to do that. And I didn’t do it at all that day.

And here’s the thing I’m ashamed of. I spent so much of the week hiding. Hiding from these fabulous people that I mostly won’t see again for at least another year, if then (shit happens, people don’t always make it). I took a bunch of naps that I’ve mostly trained myself out of needing (naps are a major feature of my pattern of “being depressed) – simply because I needed the alone time. I spent lots of time writing, and using my notebook as a shield against other people even when I was in the same room as them. Even though I was there, I felt like I missed so much of the week because of my inability to take part in all of it. I’m beating myself up for that. And beating myself up for beating myself up, and… Ugh.

The cycle, it is vicious.

I’m not sure how to break out of it yet, so I’m simply trying to acknowledge that I’m here, in the vicious cycle and hurting. Maybe I’ll try to do a couple of things that I know make me feel better – take a shower, get rid of some trash out of my room, see if I can get a few things done.

On the plus side – all that using my notebook as a shield had one positive effect. I wrote words! Actual, original words, not fanfic. Okay, so they’re not exactly in story form, but I’m working on not worrying about this. The idea of this notebook was to take the pressure off and not worry too much about writing presentable words. Instead, I’m simply letting the words in my head rush out onto the page in a vaguely narrative form, and okay, there’s lots of notes, and undefined stuff, and there’s lots of stuff to change before it becomes something I would want other people to read. But oh my God, people. I wrote words! I’m so proud!

And I’m going to continue. I have a beautiful notebook and the perfect pens (details are important!) and know where to get more of both. And there’s a story in my head that I’m dying to tell, even if I only tell it to myself. It’s liberating not to have to think about shape, or word choice, or where to begin and end, because I’m not really writing it, just telling myself a story – I don’t have to worry about anything. It’s awesome.

I’m a word person. A word person that’s actually producing words. Words of my own. It’s amazing!

In summary? There’s been a lot of good and a lot of tough in the past week. I’m trying to sort through the tough and capitalize on the good as much as I can. And believe it or not, I think I’m doing sort of okay.

Assuming nothing sidetracks me massively (which it might!) the next post will be about that failed experiment I talked about before.

Tagged as: producing words, ramblings from my head, self friendship, stories from my world, the spectre of originality