Writing is immensely therapeutic for me.
I am not the kind writer who writes with the final product in mind. There will never be a first draft, or fifteenth draft. It is the first draft and the first draft only, written and published the same night, because if not, the feeling passes and the piece will forever remain unfinished. In this way, I write for selfish reasons, I write purely for myself, as if no one else is reading. I write to write. To feel the clicking of the keyboard underneath my fingers, and to watch the words appear one by one, like clockwork, on the screen. I think this is the reason why I read fiction instead of non-fiction. My enjoyment lies solely in the process.
I am currently sitting at a Starbucks across from Othership. It is a meditation/sauna/ice bath place. It has Marcelo written all over it. But, it is precisely what I need this week, some version of release, a fresh start into the weekend.
Work has been immensely draining this week. I seem to always be running late, my inbox is always full, patients coming in with one issue end up having three more issues, each more complex than the last. It is the kind of stress that I can’t talk to my non-medicine friends about, or even talk to Marcelo about. The burden medicine bestows on you is a lonely one at times, yet it is one that anyone in medicine has experiences and understands. And in this fact, I find some some solace.
I called Aninditee yesterday, after a failed attempt at the gym turned into a late night walk along downtown Oakville. We talked about medicine, we talked about life, we talked about our families and growing up. And for a brief moment I felt like 20-something woman walking down the streets of NYC in a coming age movie. Very much lost, but just the right amount in which you feel like there is some deeper meaning to be derived from it, which somehow makes it feel more bearable, if not redeemable. There is high romance to be found in existential dreads, in desperate late night calls to your best friend living a city away. It imbues your suffering with meaning, whether real or imagined, but regardless, enough to get you through the moment until it passes. This is all we need as human beings. We live off myths. We tell ourselves stories to keep going.
I think this is precisely the reason I felt so empty this week. I had run out of imaginary stories, I felt like I no longer belonged to some greater narrative. Work occupied my brain and it forced me to operate on a purely rational and logical framework, and when I got home I was too tired to spend time to nurture the parts of my brain that operated on intuition and feeling and emotion. It hardened me, and took with it, the parts of me that I loved best. I realized I hadn’t listened to music in a while, hadn’t danced, hadn’t read a book that wasn’t targeted towards fixing some part of me that was not productive/organized/detached/enlightened enough. I was convinced I lived in a state of lack. and in an attempt to fix myself, I had unwittingly allowed myself to settle into unhappiness, neglecting the tried and true solutions that have worked for years in keeping my cup full.
Instead, I noticed that every time I was stressed, I would turn to social media for a quick hit of dopamine. If one instagram reel wasn’t enough, I would scroll and scroll until next one did, incrementally adding to my cup in minute quantities, that only amounted to something after endless scrolls. And this minute happiness would slip away as quickly as it came, while I frantically scrolled to keep up.
And so, this morning I woke up and deleted instagram and twitter. I don’t know how long this will last, but in the moment it felt like the right thing to do. I hope that it will force me to fill the space it occupied with something more meaningful; reading, writing, or perhaps even just a moment to pause, breathe and reflect.
My goal is to get back into writing in the way I used to write, as if no one would read it. To write with no expectations, imperfectly, for myself. It is the only way I know how to write. It is the way I write best. My only objective is to be consistent about it, and at least for now, not fret too much about the quality of the writing and focus solely on making this a habit. I think it will do me a lot of good. I think there is a lot to be gained in the process.
Excited to get started. Until next time,
Cindy