I’m shit at this – ProseBox

It’s been months since I’ve written. I kept telling myself writing would help, but I could not bring myself to do it.

I really did write a lot once. I used to write for myself, to get thoughts out of my head so that I could muddle through another day. I used to write poetry, but I think everyone writes poetry at some point. I don’t do that anymore either. I very rarely wrote stories, but people I trusted accused me of plagiarism because “You can’t be that good.” And I stopped writing stories.

I tell myself a million little stories to make it through the day. But I don’t write any of them down. I tell myself stories to get my mind to spin in a different direction so I can sleep, but even sleep hasn’t been a friend of mine for months.

What makes me the most crazy is that I am a teacher, and I teach writing. I spent all day today reading only one class worth of stories – 17 narrative stories written by my teenagers. I wrote more typing up feedback for them than most of them wrote in their original stories.

And all I could think was how can I ask them to write when I do not write myself anymore.

I do not know how to go back. I don’t know how to start writing again like I used to. Maybe it is as simple as keeping a diary again, but I end up with so much going on that when I get the chance to sit and think and write, I can’t. I am too stressed, too tired, too worn down by the life I have built for myself to even know where to start anymore.

I find myself quoting various lines I remember from books or movies or songs when I try to describe how I feel: “Like butter spread over too much bread.” “I dropped my basket.” “The moments of happiness – we had the experience, but missed the meaning…“

And even then I am lost. And again, I am too tired, too worn out to do anything other than feel lost and alone and sad. I don’t know how to go back, and I don’t know how to cope.

What I do know is how to act. The show must go on, and I have to keep myself together for everyone else because they need more of me than I have left.

And now it is late, and I need to sleep so that I can wake up and go to school and teach my students because they deserve far better than me that is falling apart inside right now.