Exit Stage Left: Why I went on a one-year hiatus from my writing

If you spent any time at all following me during the short life of my blog, you’ll have realized by this point that I have completely gone silent up until this past Sunday, which was the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. To me, it just seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to transition myself back into my writing, with the ability to post something new with the least amount of “Well that came out of left field” as possible. It was after all, the resurrection of Christ from the grave. Isn’t that exactly what I was doing? Rising up from the grave? Coming back from the dead? Now, I realize that my last two statements aren’t literal and there is no real comparison for what Christ went through or the significance behind it, if you believe in that, and surely I’m not actually comparing myself to Jesus Christ. But for symbolic purposes, yes.

So why did I exit stage left? I guess that’s the question, now isn’t it; the one that’s on everyone’s mind? I know it was the question on my mind, and it was my life. What caused me to go on a one-year hiatus? I mean, I was the one driving this vessel. There really was no outside excuse as to why I stopped writing. So why when I was driving down a straight and clear highway, did I grab hold of the wheel and decide to make a hard turn and drive myself right off the road?

Well, I suppose in hindsight it’s pretty clear, but I can tell you it wasn’t as clear then. This one, while it has complicated explanations and contributions, is still a simple answer in the end. Fear! Fear of being vulnerable. To have to be that open and honest with my audience, meant that I’d have to be that open and honest with myself, and well who the hell wants to do that? Isn’t it easier sometimes not to acknowledge the darkness in your life, or the changes you’re going through? It would mean we’d have to not only acknowledge them, but also address them. I wasn’t ready to do that. For me it meant admitting my weaknesses, when I was going through a time that I couldn’t afford to be anything but strong. I didn’t have time to shine a light on any cracks that I had. I just kept adding more glue to fill the cracks. It worked as well as retrying to glue the same thing over and over would work… clearly not the best solution, but I was able to hold it together long enough to get myself through it. Sort of.

I had still been reeling from the sudden, unexpected death of my father at the young age of 56, just two and a half weeks before his 57th birthday. My mother had brain surgery that same week for an aneurysm, and I was beginning to see new, longer cycles in my migraine days. My fiance and I were forced to speed up our wedding when we got word of a second deployment, and that was it. It was the deployment that finally sent me into an endless tailspin.

We had gone through a deployment before, and while I knew this one would be considerably different than the first one, I somehow thought it would be easier. I was better off shooting myself in the foot, than accepting that theory. Each day further into the deployment sent me deeper into a dark hole. My anxiety was starting to become more pronounced, but it was my depression that was rearing its ugly head the worst and I was experiencing a surge in my migraines both in the amount I was getting, and the pain and side effects that were coming with them. I was battling insomnia, probably as a result of both the anxiety and the depression. Of course, insomnia has its own poor effects on the body. Not only did the lack of sleep not help with my migraines, but I couldn’t think straight, and I was starting to rapidly lose weight on top of it. Overall, I was starting to become very unhealthy, which only made my depression worse. I had lost thirty pounds and I was becoming not only concerned, but also very self-conscious of my body image.

Still, through it all, I had an amazing support system. I had family around me and strengthened relationships that I never thought I would. As rough as it was, in reality, I was actually winning. But something was still missing. I was still sinking deeper and deeper into my depression, and further and further from the person I had once been, and it seemed less and less I was able to recognize the person staring back at me in the mirror.

It was during this stage that I realized that it was my lack of writing that was causing a big part of that. Words had always been a huge part of who I was and expression through my writing was always an outlet for me. By not writing, I was starting to feel like a part of me was missing, like I wasn’t complete. I wasn’t in a good place mentally, but going on this one-year hiatus, allowed me to see that whether I ever became a published author or made a career of writing, the writing was more than just a hobby for me. It was a part of me. Something that I needed to do to feel whole. Professional or not, I was a writer, and it’s something that I might not have realized in other circumstances. So in fact, I am partly grateful for this. If I had to try to take something positive away from this, it’s the realization that I don’t like to write so much, as I NEED to write.

While this was something that I was starting to realize partway through, I still couldn’t break through the barrier of my writing block. I couldn’t find a way to get back into it, and the more time that I let pass, the harder it became to find a way back to it. I kept feeling like I had nothing to write about, but that wasn’t true at all. In fact, I had a lot to write about, but that would involve writing the truth, and I wasn’t ready to do that. I didn’t want to share with the world, or the few family members and friends subscribed to my blog, everything that I was going through. While most of them were there to witness the start of my decline, It was one thing to have a conversation about what was going on, and another to put it down in words. By putting it into words, it was like admitting that it was a real problem and by putting it in ink, it would permanently be there, always a part of my life, unable to forget about it, or pretend it didn’t happen. It would be like flying a big banner that said, I have mental health issues, I’m weak, and there’s something wrong with me. Maybe none of that’s true, but to me, that’s what it felt like I would be doing.

Opening myself up and giving everyone else the opportunity to read all of my thoughts, and judge me for them. I already hated myself, I couldn’t bear the thought of giving other people a peephole to my soul so that they could see me for the mess that I really am and hate me too, or worse, lose respect for me.

It was this fear of being vulnerable, seeing in writing everything that I was feeling and being forced to address some real issues, fear of having to take off the mask and allow others to see that I’m not as strong as they think I am, the fear of judgment from others, and fear of judgment from myself. This fear is what stopped me from doing the one thing that I truly loved. The thing that was separate from everything else that I was or needed to be. I had become a mom and a wife. I was a daughter and a sister. I was a medical assistant. AND, I was a writer. I loved being all of those other things, and they brought me much joy, but all of them involved me being something to someone else. Writing was always something that was a part of who I was, and it was something that was just for me, and no matter what else I became, or who I was to anyone else, it’s something that would always bring me back to who I was before I became anyone else. It’s the thing that still made me Sonja.

So here I am, back at it again. I can’t promise that this time I’ll be better, as much as I might want to, but I can promise that no matter the storm around me, I’ll keep finding a way to write through it, because I’m just not me without it. We can strip ourselves down, layer by layer, until we’re standing there naked, all of our deepest inner thoughts exposed. Standing there in the rawness with full transparency to you as the readers. It might not be pretty all the time, but that’s part of life. I’m not perfect, but maybe by exposing my flaws it will help other people to understand that it’s ok to not be perfect. We can always strive to be better, but we don’t have to sit here and pretend to be superheroes. It took me a while to realize this, but now that I have, I can go back to doing the thing that I enjoy the most without the fear of writing the truth. I wish I had been able to keep up with my writing in the meantime, but even though I was too afraid to write the truth, I couldn’t bring myself to write a bunch of lies, or something that my heart wasn’t in.

Authenticity is something I value and I feel like you can always tell when someone is saying something that they don’t believe in, versus something that they are passionate about. And that authenticity, that realness of raw emotions, whether we agree with the writer or not, is what allows the reader and the writer to connect. They can sympathize and even empathize with the emotions whether they agree with the idea or not.

Writing is all about building bridges to your readers inviting them into another world, whether it’s yours or someone else’s, but if you’re not willing to walk across that bridge yourself, you’ll never get anyone else to trust you enough to follow you over. This is why even though it’s a battle, I try to be as open with my audience as possible. The fear will always be there. That’s normal for anyone who writes publicly whether they get paid from it or not. (I currently do not) Maybe I needed that time away from writing to realize how important it was to me, but I don’t want to let that fear control me anymore now that I have that knowledge. Fear may have caused me to halt my writing, but there’s nothing stopping me from going at it again.

My one-year hiatus is officially over. Now it’s time to put in the work. Everything else is either an excuse or fear and neither one deserves to be entertained. Neither one deserves the power to keep me from doing something that brings me peace in the end. I gave that fear almost a year; walked away from my writing, and something happened in the meantime. Without posting anything new, I was still gaining followers on Medium. It made me realize that just because I’m going through something, I still have people that are looking for something more. I felt like I was letting people down, and nothing lights a fire under your ass like accountability. It was time to pick myself back up and keep moving forward.

So there you have it. I suppose I could’ve summed it up in this for you. I allowed fear of the truth, both to myself and to my audience, keep me from writing. I went on a one-year hiatus, but I made it through the other side and that’s why I’m still here writing. I may not post as often as I like or on a tighter schedule, but if I keep pushing myself, I know that eventually, I’ll get there. In the end, that’s all that really matters.