Ellie Lieberman's Blog: Dusty Shelves - Posts Tagged "the-rugrats"
Where The Grapes Go
Recently I wrote a blog about being a pantser (writer who flies by the seat of their pants, rather than plans). And while my points on why I write that way are true, rebel personality and characters take the lead, it struck me as funny that writing was the one aspect of my life where I didn’t need to know the exact plan and double, if not triple, check it. It made me wonder if there were not perhaps another reason why this is my preferred method.
Outside of the worlds I create in notebooks, I suffer from anxiety. I say suffer because it’s not just an obnoxious gnat that constantly follows me around (though, it is that, too). It is also like twenty foot walls surrounding you that you cannot climb and cannot walk around. It is paralyzing obsession mixed with over-vigilance to an exhausting degree.
It’s checking the car door three to five times, if not more, just to be sure you did in fact lock it because what if it didn’t lock all the way or close all the way or you only thought you locked it or any number of other possibilities. It’s analyzing not only what the other person said to you and how they look and sound saying it, but the way they emphasized the words, which words got what type of emphasis, and what that pause that lasted for three seconds meant. And it’s everything, including yourself; how you hold yourself, what you are doing, how you are doing it, and the way all of that might be perceived.
Who needs someone else to gaslight you when you manage to do it to yourself?
In order to minimize the craziness, planning helps, including knowing exactly what the plan is and what is expected of me. In other words, do not just tell me to put the groceries away when I am helping you at your house. Tell me you want me to start with the fruits and exactly where you put your fruit and the order you put your fruit in. Are you like Chuckie Finster and you go big to small? Are you like the step mother in Blossom and need to have them alphabetized? Or do you want it be like an artist’s pallet? Otherwise, I could spend two hours trying to figure out where the grapes go and then the next two weeks fretting over if I put them in the right place and what if I did not and how I promised to help you put the groceries away and only got to the grapes and what if you never ask me for help again or I let you down.
This seems a bit extreme for something so minor. And, yet, it takes a lot to make the thought train come to a screeching halt, to try to follow Elsa’s advice and “let it go,” to move on. The truth is, it would probably take a lot for me to step foot in your kitchen again, if I’m not avoiding you all together because what if I caused you to misplace your grapes and then they get all moldy and you have to throw them out because of me. And who throws out food? There are people starving and I made you throw out your grapes!
Whether it’s trying to help someone, working outside the home, or even going out with friends, I have to know the plan or else I pace a hole in the floor (seeing how I live in a third-floor apartment, this is not advisable) and work myself up to a full fledge panic attack.
Writing, however, is a type of chaos I can embrace, instead of fighting it. It flows and it’s messy and it’s freeing, instead of trying to make it and me fit into whatever I perceive your cookie cutter mold to be. The grapes don’t have a specific spot in my writing. They go wherever and that’s okay and there’s no worrying over if they’re in the right spot, because there is no right spot. Everywhere is the right spot. There is no overanalyzing facial features and the way someone speaks. It’s simply putting pen to paper.
What I have come to discover in trying to figure out why I write the way I do is that it offers me a respite I find nowhere else. For those moments when I touch pen to paper, I am not stuck in the obsessions and the replaying and the overanazlying.
My therapist spoke to me about meditation. This is my meditation. This is how I can finally release these thoughts I clutch until my fingers turn white or that clutch me until I turn blue. I live my life within such rigid guidelines, so terrified to stray from the path, that it is only in my writing, where I am able, I allow myself, the freedom and the respite to do otherwise, and to, quite frankly, be who I actually am (the whole rebel personality thing).
Outside of the worlds I create in notebooks, I suffer from anxiety. I say suffer because it’s not just an obnoxious gnat that constantly follows me around (though, it is that, too). It is also like twenty foot walls surrounding you that you cannot climb and cannot walk around. It is paralyzing obsession mixed with over-vigilance to an exhausting degree.
It’s checking the car door three to five times, if not more, just to be sure you did in fact lock it because what if it didn’t lock all the way or close all the way or you only thought you locked it or any number of other possibilities. It’s analyzing not only what the other person said to you and how they look and sound saying it, but the way they emphasized the words, which words got what type of emphasis, and what that pause that lasted for three seconds meant. And it’s everything, including yourself; how you hold yourself, what you are doing, how you are doing it, and the way all of that might be perceived.
Who needs someone else to gaslight you when you manage to do it to yourself?
In order to minimize the craziness, planning helps, including knowing exactly what the plan is and what is expected of me. In other words, do not just tell me to put the groceries away when I am helping you at your house. Tell me you want me to start with the fruits and exactly where you put your fruit and the order you put your fruit in. Are you like Chuckie Finster and you go big to small? Are you like the step mother in Blossom and need to have them alphabetized? Or do you want it be like an artist’s pallet? Otherwise, I could spend two hours trying to figure out where the grapes go and then the next two weeks fretting over if I put them in the right place and what if I did not and how I promised to help you put the groceries away and only got to the grapes and what if you never ask me for help again or I let you down.
This seems a bit extreme for something so minor. And, yet, it takes a lot to make the thought train come to a screeching halt, to try to follow Elsa’s advice and “let it go,” to move on. The truth is, it would probably take a lot for me to step foot in your kitchen again, if I’m not avoiding you all together because what if I caused you to misplace your grapes and then they get all moldy and you have to throw them out because of me. And who throws out food? There are people starving and I made you throw out your grapes!
Whether it’s trying to help someone, working outside the home, or even going out with friends, I have to know the plan or else I pace a hole in the floor (seeing how I live in a third-floor apartment, this is not advisable) and work myself up to a full fledge panic attack.
Writing, however, is a type of chaos I can embrace, instead of fighting it. It flows and it’s messy and it’s freeing, instead of trying to make it and me fit into whatever I perceive your cookie cutter mold to be. The grapes don’t have a specific spot in my writing. They go wherever and that’s okay and there’s no worrying over if they’re in the right spot, because there is no right spot. Everywhere is the right spot. There is no overanalyzing facial features and the way someone speaks. It’s simply putting pen to paper.
What I have come to discover in trying to figure out why I write the way I do is that it offers me a respite I find nowhere else. For those moments when I touch pen to paper, I am not stuck in the obsessions and the replaying and the overanazlying.
My therapist spoke to me about meditation. This is my meditation. This is how I can finally release these thoughts I clutch until my fingers turn white or that clutch me until I turn blue. I live my life within such rigid guidelines, so terrified to stray from the path, that it is only in my writing, where I am able, I allow myself, the freedom and the respite to do otherwise, and to, quite frankly, be who I actually am (the whole rebel personality thing).
