Baby Steps

by Krisztina Lazar

This is incredibly hard to write. Yet there is something inside of me screaming like a banshee to be let out. I have a block, I realized. A big one. I used to write all the time. Writing, especially poetry was such an outlet for my soul for so many years. In fact, it was perhaps the clearest window to my inner workings, even more transparent than my art. I would pour myself into each word, each phrase and each sentence. I would blog regularly and there are tons of my writings on the internet somewhere. Sadly, most of those blogs have come down and I lost all of the hard copies to a computer crash years ago. Quite a lesson on impermanence. Words could flow out of me unimpeded, unchecked, raw and real.

For the last 6 years every time I try to write, even when it’s a perfectly formed idea, article, or story, I start looking at the blank piece of paper and I freeze. My heart begins to palpitate, my palms get sweaty and I realized just yesterday that I legitimately have a mini panic attack every time. I end up writing a few scattered words on the page intending to fill things in later and then walk away from my work altogether. My palms are sweaty now as I write this too.

I had a break through yesterday. I was listening to a book titled, “Rise, Sister, Rise” and before you roll your eyes like I did when I first read the title, let me tell you, it is legit. Dammit if what she is writing about didn’t go straight to my soul and speak directly to my heart. And I realized suddenly as I was reading that the reason I haven’t been writing is because I am afraid, terrified, of putting myself out there again. See, the last time I really revealed that part of myself; I was criticized, made fun of and really put down, hard. I’ll never forget the rainy San Francisco winter day that I sat in my room sobbing for hours and I vowed to myself I would never let that happen again. It wasn’t worth it. I knew what I had to say was valid and I didn’t need it spit on and thrown in my face so fuck everyone and I’m going to keep it all to myself.

Well, that doesn’t exactly work for me as a strategy. While in so many ways I have deeply private feelings and thoughts that are just mine, I am also quite a sharer. I talk to people; I tell them stories, my stories, my experiences and most of what I am thinking about because I suppose I hope that it can help someone somehow. If I tell you a story of how I fucked up or how I learned something, maybe you’ll still do exactly the same thing, but then think, oh yeah, I see what she was talking about. If I tell you the way I look at the world, maybe it will inspire someone to see the Constant Rainbowness everywhere like I do too. But this whole time I have been shoving an entire part of my self-expression so far down into the well that I could barely hear her voice crying for my attention.

I knew something was wrong and I needed to fix it. I could feel all of my ideas begging to be shared, needing to have a life of their own outside of me. So, I started talking about my art, my ideas and my stories to try and scratch this chronic itch and heal this gaping wound. But it wasn’t enough. Talking was freeing up some of my ideas and letting them come to the surface, but even though I was often videoing my words to my and preserve them, there is still a level of impermanence to speech. It floats to your ears, you retain what you can, and it’s gone. Writing lasts. You can go back and read something over and over and get something different each time. Writing is commitment as well from a writer’s perspective. And with this permanence came all of my fear. I could be held accountable for my ideas again, laughed at and ridiculed, shamed and ostracized.

It started as a whimper. I kept thinking of how I missed writing. I would try to write something that was welling up in my soul and I couldn’t do it. Then it continued as a nagging, a constant need and want to write, like coming to almost orgasm without climaxing and blowing your lid. Super unfulfilling and shitty. Lately, it’s been a full-throated scream, a cry from my hollowed out linguistic expression that had the terror and fear of a banshee crying in the wee hours of the night. She was unnourished, ravenous and furious with me for ignoring her for so long. Yet there was still something blocking her way, like a ball of barbed wire that was barring the way through my throat and not letting her out.

I truly felt that block yesterday. I felt it sharp, cutting and totally suffocating as it squelched the voice that connects my mind, my hands and my heart. I noticed it fully for the first time and saw into what it was. It was shame and hurt. Shame for my ideas, shame for my words, shame for my thoughts and unbelievably hurt for being made to feel this way for something that I knew was an essential part of me. Of course this translates to shame for myself, for who I am and who I project into the world.

I also realized that I was feeling this shame, this hurt and terror working on several subtle levels as well. I have a strong visceral reaction when I see someone getting burned alive in a movie. Like I literally can feel the burning on my skin. I suffer from fibromyalgia, which often feels like flames coursing through by body. Whether it’s from one of my past lives, or even several, or a historical imprint of womanhood that many of us share, there is an overwhelming sense that revealing ourselves, our strength, our wisdom, our power is intrinsically unsafe. Women with deep inner knowledge were tortured, burned and mutilated and being different in some way was often a death sentence. My subtle energies, highly aware of this past, were enforced and strengthened from my own personal experiences, and I locked everything down deciding that it wasn’t safe; it wasn’t safe to be me.

I was sitting in my car between appointments as all of this fell on me like a sac of potatoes. Tears welled up and started to flow. For several years now I have been working on meditating on my feelings, letting them really express themselves without trying to push them away. So I sat with it, with HER, since she ais a part of me. I sat with the overwhelming shame and hurt. I heard what she had to say, relived all of the moments that reinforced her, and let her truly express herself in all ways. Then, I held her all like I would hold a child that stumbled and got a bruise. I acknowledged the pain and suffering that she had gone through and felt great compassion and love flowing to her. I suffused that ball of barbed wire with tears and love and it slowly began to loosen its grip.

So today I sat down and I just began to write. The words flowed from me like they used to. Midway through writing this I stopped because I realized that I was writing, actually writing in my authentic voice and I instantly started to laugh and cry. Holy shitballs. But baby steps right? Thinking of all of the writing I want to do still makes that barbed wire ball start tightening back up and the banshee’s eyes widen in fury. Nope. One step at a time. Yet I must acknowledge this as a huge step forward. A few shorts days ago, this wouldn’t have even been a possibility so there is something to celebrate and by that I mean, give love to the part of myself that shyly, slowly, and timidly began to ease herself out of the darkness.