I’ve been stuck in my writing for the past five months. Nothing seems to come to fruition the way it used to. It’s hard because the timing of this recent struggle coincides with my recent bipolar diagnosis, which is a monumental thing in and of itself.
I’m still grappling with it, with what this new diagnosis means for my life. The reality is, while it changes everything, it also changes nothing. Even if I now have the words to describe my mental health challenge, the challenges in and of themselves don’t change at all. It’s not like I now face a different set of obstacles, that my disease manifests itself in different ways, its that I now have an all-encompassing term for all the manifestations I’ve been living with over the past 32 years.
Beyond that, I’m grappling with a lot of life changes I haven’t known how to even approach.
If I’m being honest, a huge part of what’s kept me from writing over the past several months has been the breakup. Not knowing how to write about it for one. See how I just casually threw it in there because I don’t even know how to bring it up?
Is it possible that a breakup can be so all-consuming that it sends a person tail-spinning into writers’ block? I’ve pondered that question over many an unfinished blog draft as I questioned where my will to write has gone in my new Blake-less world.
I think a lot of it had to do with not wanting to admit the breakup was real. A secret hope that if I didn’t put it in writing or acknowledge it officially that would somehow make it less official. But the reality is this: while I was in the psychiatric ward discovering I had bipolar disorder, Blake broke up with me. He did it to give me the space and time I need to figure out who I am, especially with the monumentality of this new diagnosis.
That’s all I’ll say about that. Trust me when I say I’m sparing you about three thousands words of heartbreak to go with it.
The reality is, in this new and terrifying world I need writing more than ever. Writing is where I go to sort myself out, so in the midst of discovering I’m bipolar and starting my life over again, it has to be here. So here I am. It’s not anything groundbreaking, but it’s a start where there’s been silence and I’m going to run with it.
