Writing Dangerously

“Write something dangerous,” he challenged us.

It was the “fall back in love with writing” part of the session description that drew me in. I need that. Badly. So I went to the session at Blissdom.

I actually quite liked that one. Jeff Goins is a young guy—younger than I am, I’d wager—and when he first got up in front of a room full of women to talk about the love of writing I was a little nervous for him. Because he looked a little nervous. But then he got going and it was clear this was a topic he had a handle on.

He talked about how we get to the point where we lose our love of writing because we’re not writing for ourselves anymore. I totally get that. I just don’t think that’s my problem.

I’ve always written for myself. Sure, now and then I do something sponsored because, hey, we all need money, but also because writing things like that actually challenges me. I want to maintain my own voice and not turn into a commercial, because that is so not who I am, and that’s not an easy thing to do when writing about somebody else’s product or service. It’s just not.

But here’s the thing. Writing for myself is tough when there are things I can’t write about. Two or three of them, at the moment, which adds up to rather a lot when you consider how much brain space they take up.

One of them is related to work, and while I’d love to muse about taking on a new job in a new city amid all kinds of other things going on, it seems ill-advised. So that’s a no go.

A second is just a personal thing and it’s sort of related to the work thing. Every day I write post after post about this in my head, but they’re not going to appear on these pages. At least not yet.

Write something dangerous? What would that be? Both of those things would fall into that category, I think, but my filter is standing firm on those two.

Something about a personal experience, maybe? That’s almost entirely what this blog has been so far. Yelling at my baby? Been there, wrote that. Being told by my husband he felt I was abusive? Covered it. Seeing a way out in a bottle of pills? It’s already out there.

Dangerous is not my problem.

So what should I write about? How about this:

A couple of weeks ago, I lowered the dose of my anti-depressants. With the advice of my new doctor, I cut it by a quarter. I want to do more. I want to slash the dosage and perhaps literally throw that bottle of pills into a field of snow. But that’s not how it works.

So I cut it down a little bit. Staying safe. Being smart. And you know what? It’s kind of kicking my ass.

This medication is tied to me by a blanket of dependence and resentment. This was the only thing that worked but the piece of me that’s thankful for that is pushed down into a corner, buried by frustration over how little control I have over whether I keep taking it.

I’m going to have to come off it eventually. I mean, yes, I could stay on it forever, and part of me is prepared for that, but there’s a part of me that’s yelling louder. A part that’s adamant that I should find out if I can function without it. And whenever that is, I know I’m going to have to go through the horrible transition that seems to be a part of this particular medication. The transition that builds a brick wall around reality so that all I can see is the scrawled graffiti, boldly proclaiming in angry red letters that “LIFE SUCKS.”

Yes, I guess that’s dangerous. So I wrote about it.