an outdated creative process

my creative process used to be: find an emotionally dangerous situation and embed myself within it, write about what I find there. then, leave the situation and write about that.

but this was me at 23, before the two years of solitude and frontal lobes coming online. it was easy to be messy and intense during the last gasp of adolescence. i hadn’t yet experienced the monotonous job or the security of meeting my physical needs.

over time, against my will, i developed the ability to spot emotional sinkholes from afar without needing the direct experience of falling into them.

and worse, i stopped wanting to spot them at all. I became more interested in things that were so boring i barely wanted to speak about them, let alone write about them: going to bed early, eating enough food,
communicating safety,
communicating safety,
communicating safety to my body.

my body as an honored home, my sweet routine as the maker of that home. my body as an uncomplicated fact, no longer a weapon. no longer a crash test dummy for my life’s wisdom.

and this was all so dull compared with the rollercoaster of emotion i chased for years. but that rollercoaster became dull, too. like all things do, eventually.

so now i find myself in this weird, liminal space where I have clearly grown into a different person, but have not yet learned to communicate as her yet. I keep reaching for the old voice because it is familiar and practiced. in moments of desperation, i have even tried it on again. and to no one’s surprise, it no longer fits.

after months of frustrated effort, i have realized: speaking with this new voice will require that i first, and above all, LISTEN.

listen and then respond.
listen and then express what i hear.
not what i think. not what i want. not what i remember. not what i imagine.

and it will feel wrong for a while.

because the thing about listening is, if you’re really doing it right, you won’t know what’s going to happen next.