on writing

i haven’t been able to write.

that may not seem remarkable, except that it is. for ten years, i have journaled nearly every single day, as faithfully as one brushes their teeth, as routinely as one checks the weather.

the last two months, though, nothing.

i sit down; i uncap the pen; i press the tip to the page; i wait for the ink to flow in the way it always has. nothing. i feel emptied of language, stripped of the impulse to arrange words into meaning.

this is new.

writing has always been the place where i feel safest, most at home. writing is cathartic, clarifying, comforting. it is how i metabolize the world around me. the day ends, i sit down, the pen moves, and something once formless and heavy transfigures into something i can absorb, or at the very least, carry. without it, experience just sits there—undigested, leaden, calcifying beneath my ribs.

there’s a common distinction people like to make: writing is an art; math is a science. writing, loose and subjective; math, rigid and exact.

i don’t believe this. i have always loved language for its rigor, its precision, its ability to capture a feeling, a moment, a person, a place. there is nothing quite like spending an entire afternoon on a single sentence, rearranging its clauses, swapping one word for another, and finally reaching its period, knowing: this is it. this is exactly how it felt to stand inside that kitchen, in that light, at that hour, with that person.

lately, that precision has eluded me.

for the first time in recent memory, language feels insufficient. mere ink blots on a page. words feel as though they buckle under the weight of what i’m asking them to carry. no matter how hard i try, i cannot make them mean what i need them to mean.

i suspect this is not a failure of language but a refusal of mine.

a refusal to craft a narrative. an unwillingness to extract meaning. i am not ready for the story to be told.

dr. michael levin writes:

selves are simultaneously a construct in the mind of an observer, including itself, and real, causally important agents that live, suffer, die, strive, and matter… observers interpret what they sense from their own perspective; their allegiance is to extracting meaning, not preserving accurate details… the criterion for being an observer is that an observer is fundamentally committed to reinterpretation and meaning, not micro-scale realism.

when i write, i become the observer. i take the day’s raw material and impose form. i decide where it begins, where it turns, where it ends. this has always felt like a gift—the ability to make sense of things, to interpret chaos and pain, to construct truth and meaning.

but heartbreak resists such gestures. it refuses proportion. it disregards sequence. it denies interpretation. what can language do with something that does not wish to be understood? what is there to say. what can you say. what words bring comfort to such loss.

to begin writing now would mean admitting it’s over. that our narrative is inching to a close, that our history stands to be distilled and framed, that a version of me without you has begun to solidify.

i don’t know if i’m ready for that.

if, as levin suggests, the self is the construction and reconstruction of experiences and memories, i do not know if i’m ready to meet that new self yet. i do not know what will remain once i rebuild the version of myself that does not include you. i do not know if i will recognize him. i do not know if he will be smaller. i do not know if the rooms inside him will echo.

i don’t write because some part of me—irrational, stubborn, still broken—believes that as long as the story remains unwritten, it remains unfinished. and if it remains unfinished, then perhaps there is still hope. the door stays open, even if no one is coming through.

the last time i saw you, you left your socks at my place.
you always took them off. your feet got too hot, you said.
the other day, i finally picked them off the floor.
i stood there, holding them, trying to decide whether to throw them out or return them to you.
a couple of months ago, i wouldn’t have had to think.
a couple of months ago, i would have taken a photo and texted, again?
a couple of months ago, you would have laughed, retrieved them on your next visit, only to leave another pair behind.
a couple of months ago, it would have meant nothing.
now, it’s all i have left.
a pair of socks.
and a story i have yet to write.