There was a time in my life when I could write for hours.
Back then, I was single, unafraid of being alone, and full of angst - a perfect formula for creativity. I traveled solo with a small backpack and a large sense of introspection. I had Rilke’s lines about solitude practically memorized. I dined alone without shame, my notebook beside my plate, scribbling deep thoughts on paper napkins about finding Mr. Right and whether parallel lines might eventually meet in an alternate universe. My non-working hours were spacious. I read literature, both medical and non-medical, not summaries, not pasted quotes on Instagram, but real, full-bodied paper novels that stretched my mind and made me highlight things with purpose.
And I wrote. Oh boy, did I write. Essays, reflections, long metaphors about longing and absence and all the stuff of poetry. Most of it was about wanting a husband. Wanting children. Wanting someone to share long Sunday breakfasts with.
Spoiler alert: I found him. He is great. We decided to get married within six months after meeting each other, and had our beautiful wedding 3 weeks before my 38th birthday. Despite my age, we had two beautiful daughters. Contrary to my expectation, Sunday breakfasts were not about murmured conversations in bed, but now involve spilled milk, lost plushies, and someone crying because the pancake has a tiny burnt edge.
And now, after everything I wished for came true, I can no longer write.
I mean, I still technically can (today's blogging attempt, for example). I haven’t forgotten how to string sentences together. But I haven’t been flexing my writing muscles in so long, they’re now mostly atrophied connective tissue and nostalgia. What used to be elegant rituals of reflection, red wine, classical music, and long journal entries are now 45-second bursts of thought before someone yells “Mommy, ate stole my crayon again!”
I used to read John Steinbeck. Now I read tsismis. Not even classy, but those juicy tsismis we read in Facebook. My literary diet has devolved from classic novels to knowing who cheated on whose best friend, with accompanying screenshots of sleazy liaisons. I haven’t touched a novel in years. The only books I read now are medical textbooks (because I have to), usually with one eye open and my phone in the other hand, checking if that viral post about a cheating husband has been updated or not.
My right brain? Infarcted. My last creative impulse was probably spent naming my daughter’s stuffed hedgehog and the best I though of was tadaaaa... "Hedgy". So creative of me, huh? If I took a quiz today, I wouldn’t know the themes of Jane Eyre or The Picture of Dorian Gray, but I would surely ace “Guess Which Influencer’s Husband Got Someone Pregnant.”
And yet, strangely, I don’t feel like I am a failed writer. Just a paused one. One with far messier source material than before. Because what I have now is life. Unfiltered, unedited, full of stretch marks and sticky kisses and moments that never make it to Instagram but live forever in my memory. I used to write about the love I longed for. Now I live it. Loudly. Sleeplessly. Joyfully. Exhaustingly.
And one day, when my brain isn’t full of to-do lists and Cocomelon songs, when my children no longer think that a closed bathroom door with me doing my morning ritual inside is just a suggestion, I will write again. About all of this.
About how I thought I was losing myself, but was really just adding chapters. Unpunctuated, chaotic, and beautiful.
And maybe by then, I’ll finally finish that novel I started reading in 2022, during that brief and surreal luxury of downtime after my C-section for my second baby. By some strange and poetic twist of fate, it’s Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude which, let’s be honest, is also the estimated time before this mom gets real solitude again.
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