I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. Particularly in the last fifteen minutes that I’ve been staring at this blank page. There is so much I want to say but I don’t know where to begin. A kind of performance anxiety might be in play, where I begin to second-guess myself and my motivation to write. But I think the most important thing I can do is to be present with the discomfort, to wait it out and not run from it.
I am not a seasoned writer by any means, but I do have plenty of experience starting and stopping. My heart would get carried away with the notion of becoming a writer every once in a blue moon. I bought all the writing guides I came across in used book sales. I registered for writing workshops at the Gotham Writers Workshop back when I lived in New York City. I even started a few blogs, one related to baking, and the other devoted to a newly formed infatuation with Korean dramas. (I titled it, “Korean Dramas Make Me Cry”, which was an understatement given their profound and clockwork-like ability to make me bawl until I became an empty shell.)
But here is what happens. I don’t read more than a few chapters, if that much. I stop attending workshops. I peter out after a few entries. I shelve my dream until the guilt of giving up fades.
What I could never understand is, why do I have this dream if I can’t do it?
Since we are on the subject of recurring, unfulfilled dreams, I have always wanted to play the guitar. In a band. And sing. As I have never attempted to write a song of my own, I suspect that I envision myself rocking out playing covers. Or maybe I have an undisclosed fantasy of uniting with a talented songwriter who is in dire need of a minuscule Filipino-Chinese-American gal with limited vocal range and elementary strumming skills to give full expression to their music. I haven’t given it much thought.
I think I was sixteen or 17 when I bought my first electric guitar, inspired as I was by The Smashing Pumpkins. In the nearly thirty years since, several guitars have passed into my hands. At some point, I even briefly entertained the idea of becoming a classical guitar major. But I can’t say that I know more now than in those first few months when I learned the major C-scale in open position. If music is a foreign language, then I have yet to move on beyond basic greetings. Hola! No hablo español. Adiós!
Oh, and speaking of foreign languages. I came to this country from the Philippines when I was five years old. I entered the first grade knowing only the bits of English we might’ve been taught in school or whatever may have seeped into my brain from blankly watching Wonder Woman and The Incredible Hulk on TV back in Manila. I was desperate to do well in school and assimilate. Unfortunately, in my exuberance to do so, I ignorantly decided to discard my native language and identity, as one would shed a coat that was no longer in style.
Though I was obliged to take years of Spanish in middle school and high school, it wasn’t something that really captivated my interest back then. I had a few Spanish-speaking friends, but it was beyond the scope of my imagination to practice with them. During freshman year orientation, I scanned the course bulletin and thought, wouldn’t it be so worldly and fascinating to take Russian 101? I will neither confirm nor deny that it had anything to do with the cute Russian boy that my friend and I were grouped with during orientation.
Fast forward a month into the semester and I received the first of many “W’s” (for Withdrawal) in my college career. In my defense, this was long before Duolingo and YouTube and podcasts were available. I was also the only non-Russian student in the entire class, and grading was based on a curve. It would‘ve taken too much bandwidth to pass the class given the rest of my schedule, or so I reasoned. Nearly a decade later, my friend called me up to say “Guess who I ran into at work? Sergey!” Then without missing a beat, “Remember when you registered for Russian 101 because of him?”
No mercy.
But to be honest, the most shameful thing about it was that I was doing okay in the class. I wasn’t going to throw the curve but I’m pretty sure I could’ve passed had I stuck with it. I say that now, with the confidence of having accumulated three bachelors degrees and an innumerable amount of college credits from five different institutions. But back then, I became overcome with hopelessness. The brilliant colors of my motivation dulled to muted grays. I wanted to protect myself from further hurt and future disappointment.
This has been the narrative of my life, and I am so fucking tired of it.
I don’t know if anyone else does this, but I often calculate how much of my anticipated life span I have left to go in order to accomplish the things that I want. Time seemed like this endless commodity that I could afford to waste in my teens and 20s. By the time my thirties rolled around, I thought “Okay, you’ve used up 33%. You better start getting serious.” Now, at 45, I’ve only got half a tank left — if I’m lucky! — and I am forced to admit I’ve been driving around the same block this whole damn time.
I have been more or less aware of my tendencies, but I have never been clear of the “why’s.” Why do I abandon my dreams instead of pursuing them? Why does it feel like my dreams are impossible for me? Why do I insist on making myself so small?
Recently, something I came across incidentally seemed to provide an answer. I was listening to a Mel Robbins podcast where she interviewed Jim Kwik, a brain coach, author and entrepreneur. I was so moved by his personal story that I actually bought his book, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life. In the book, he quotes James Clear (author of Atomic Habits, apparently another must-read) in discussing the impact of negative emotions, using the example of running into a tiger in a forest:
“When that tiger crosses your path, for example, you run. The rest of the world doesn’t matter. You are focused entirely on the tiger, the fear it creates, and how you can get away from it.”
Essentially, negative emotions can narrow a person’s focus and range of possibilities. This instinct is probably very helpful in an emergency or life-or-death situation, but how does one go on living the rest of their life? I think this is where PTSD enters the picture. I’ve been dealing with that metaphorical tiger since childhood, and I have yet to outrun it. It’s always lurking around the corner, ready to remind me that I am not allowed to be out of its reach.
The situation had come to a head when my daughter was about a year old. I appeared fine on the outside, but internally I was crumbling. Tigers were everywhere. Thankfully, with the help of a psychologist, a social worker and a psychiatrist, I was able to heal enough to become functional and content, with the occasional chance of joy. But because we were too busy shooting tigers (or at least turning them into harmless kittens) in 50-minute increments there wasn’t enough capacity to address the more existential or utopian concerns. Like, why do I keep chasing my tail?
The road from the end of therapy to this moment hasn’t been entirely smooth, but here I am. No longer terrified, but curious. Now that I’ve answered the “why’s”, I can ask myself new questions like, what if there is nothing left to fear? And what happens if I don’t run?
I want to see just how far I can go.