#fiveoclock

Crystal Serenity

This morning I woke up at five o'clock and wondered if I should get up. Before (what does that even mean, before?), I used to wake up at five o'clock every day. And I loved it ! Because I did it to write. The blue silence of dawn, the mystery between night and day, it's magical, damn it! I'm really nostalgic for those moments, now that I usually get up around nine o'clock. So, I seriously wondered what I should do, because lately (the after before), I haven't been writing anymore. It's been months, maybe a year, and if we thought about it properly (but do we really want to?), and didn't count the last gasps, maybe even two years. Whereas Before...

Argh!! It would be difficult to convey the joy, no, the ecstasy that used to fill me during those moments of pure creation, those flights outside of the world, that floating in the eternal, outside of time... So, is that all over now?

How can it be over? I asked myself. In my bed, eyes wide open to make sure I didn't fall back to sleep foolishly, I analyzed the situation. How did I start being unable to write at all? First, I finished college. A return to studying psychology, if you want to know. Go ahead, make fun, the nutjob studied psychology. Yeah well, if you knew who hangs around in those classes... Anyway. It took me a year to recover from those four years of studying, ‘cause it was so intense in terms of learning and rich in emotions. I'll detail it some other time if you want to talk about Freud. So, depression.

The seeds had been there for a while, they had probably always been there, but they got a huge dose of fertilizer to the face. Crying every night was still manageable, I was already familiar with it. Cutting myself, I did it briefly in high school, not as deep though. But the psychiatric clinic, I wasn't familiar with that. Boom! Meds, and I found myself on a month and a half vacation, far from everything, with my boyfriend. Everything was fine, you know. No brain, no thoughts, no creativity, and most importantly: no guilt for not having them anymore! Bliss!

And here we are: I wake up at five, wondering if I should get up to write and enjoy my life. The thing is, there should be a good reason to do it. To be sure. Oh, I forgot to tell you: I stopped taking the medication. So I had this argument with myself: if you get up, you'll find your reason! Inspiration doesn't just come on its own, you have to go after it, blah blah... and the other part retorted: if that reason existed, we wouldn't be having this debate, and I would already be in front of my computer! Because the rest of the analysis confirms it: I have nothing to write.

Abandoned projects, these past few years, are like an invasive species. The fantasy trilogy started in 2016? One and a half books done. The fiction started in 2020? Missing the ending. The pixel art video game started during college? Guess. The tabletop RPG based on the same universe? Special case: everything is there, or almost, except the players. Coding? Oh yes, I started learning how to code too. I wanted to create a character creation website for my RPG. Abandoned too, of course. The science fiction story outlined this year? Not even started. I'm starting to lose faith, you see. And what happened during the vacation? An urge to create a webtoon, believe it or not. So, and you'll probably understand, I don't have an ounce of ambition for this project. And even though I started a panel or two, just to test… I'm not going to give you an exhaustive list, you get the idea. I discovered a new feeling: the desire to stop something that hasn't even begun to avoid being disappointed by seeing it unfinished.