It was sophomore year of high school and it happened like this, I’m pouring poetry from my fingertips, filling my journal with more ideas than I can keep up with and then nothing. It just stops and suddenly it becomes painful to pick up my pen. It was the hardest year of my life, I called it “writers block” because I didn’t really know what else it could’ve been. But when the months slipped by and the motivation was still lost to me, I had the revelation that maybe the passion was gone. It seemed as though I was stuck in a pivoting black hole, not sure what I supposed to do from here and I was scared. I don’t think I’d ever been so scared. Six years of dedication wasted on something that was just going to leave without a trace, like a bad ex-boyfriend. The one you tell your grandkids about.
Talking about it wasn’t an option because I didn’t fully understand what was happening myself. Not to mention the fact that no writing wants to admit they’ve lost their passion to practice their art because that in itself is a type of disgrace that’s hard to live down. Not being able to pick up my pen because of what? I just don’t have anything to say anymore. I don’t know why it happened either. It’s easy to blame it on stress, but a part of me wonders if this was my creative subconscious finding a way to tell to take a break. To stop forcing things out of myself that weren’t ready to come out yet.
I wish I could sit here and describe some life altering moment as to when I finally got my passion back but the truth was, it just sort of happened. A moment I didn’t even realize was happened until I took a step back and realized I wasn’t scared anymore. I was lucky, because when this happened was when I needed it the most. Writing assignments were being handed out left and write, and there was nothing inside of me to give back and be proud of. Until that one night. It was around three am and I couldn’t sleep so I pulled out a book of old writing prompts I’d picked up from the thrift store. On and off I would pick it up hoping that one of them would spark and interest inside of me. Well, who knew a Thursday night could be so lucky. The particular prompt asked me to start each paragraph I wrote with a quote I liked. There was nothing special about this prompt, but I noticed that even though it was slow at first as I begun to write, pretty soon I couldn’t stop. I’d gotten to use to over the past few months only writing a few sentences before feeling drained. I suppose you can imagine how I felt when I looked down and noticed two pages of my journal completely filled. It was euphoric.
-Sierra Lunsford, Website Editor