14.03.21: The Fear of Healing

This week I reflect on my journey towards recovery, and why I'm becoming increasingly afraid to reach it.

What a terrifying thing it is, to heal.

I’ve struggled with my mental health for most of my adult life, and the idea of recovery has always seemed like a distant possibility - a goal so far away, I never really expected that I might reach it.

But after years of therapy, lifestyle changes, giving up alcohol (and various other inebriants) and rediscovering my love of writing, I’m finally in a place where that horizon seems closer. I don’t think I’ll ever be free of anxiety, or this gentle ache between my ribs, but I can now go entire days without the twisting, gnawing thing beneath my skin. The gaps between panic attacks are growing longer, and I don’t have the same affinity with self-destruction as I used to.

I don’t think healing means living completely without anxiety, but maybe it can mean living a life that allows room for hope - and I’m closer to that than I think I ever have been.

I think recovery is a word that’s no longer lost in my mouth, and if I’m honest, that has slowly begun to terrify me.

I really try to talk about the things that scare me in my work, but I have to admit I’ve been avoiding this issue, recently. In my chapbook, The Things We Leave Behind, I included a poem called ‘She Asks What I’m Afraid Of’. Here’s the poem:

This is the closest I’ve come to really talking about this fear, and even then I knew I was skipping over it a little. It’s one of those issues I don’t allow myself to dwell on, even when I know I have to.

So, I decided to write about it, here. Over the last few days, I’ve been trying to figure out why the idea of healing frightens me, and why I’m reluctant to talk about it. I think some of it comes from a deep-seeded fear of change, even when that change is positive.

Anxiety isn’t pleasant, but it is consistent. Over a long enough period, even this can begin to feel somehow comforting - like it’s part of a long-established and well-worn routine. I guess, when you spend enough time with it, even the darkness can find a way to feel like home.

I also wonder if I’ve become too used to pain being such an important part of my self-image. I have long defined myself by the things I’ve been through, and without them I simply don’t know who I am. The idea of recovery means a version of me I’m not familiar with, a version that can’t fall back into self-destruction and actually has to fight; to love; to care about the things around him.

I think we are all a little frightened of the unknown, it’s just that the person I am becoming is so foreign to me - I don’t yet know how to live with a stranger.

Of course, this is all something I know I can learn to live with. If I’m honest, I feel guilty even being concerned about these changes, when so many other people are still so far from the light.

But maybe this isn’t what I’m really afraid of.

When it comes down to it, I think I’m terrified of not being able to write without the pain. I am reluctant to heal, when I know that healing may come at the cost of the only thing I’m really proud of.

It’s been a week or so since I’ve written any new poetry, and while that’s not long, any gap between poems fills me with this fear: what if I can’t do it anymore? What if I have nothing left to say?

Writing has become the driving force in my life over the past several months, and I think, the main reason I’ve made real progress in my recovery. My writing and my mental health have something of a symbiotic relationship; the pain helps me to write, the writing helps me to find meaning, and the meaning helps me to heal. But this relationship is finite, and I’m terrified of the natural conclusion to that process.

If recovery means I no longer need (or am able) to write, then I’m not sure recovery is something I really want to chase. I don’t know how to create art without pain.

I don’t know how to be the person I want to be, unless that person is someone who is hurting. I don’t know how to be anything other than the person I’ve always been.

The truth is, I don’t have a conclusion to this, not in the way I would usually.

I don’t know what the answer is, and I don’t know what the future holds. All I can really tell you is that I will write as long as I can, and that I will be grateful to have shared this journey with you - however long it may last.

Yours

Blake

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The Things We Leave Behind is officially released on Tuesday, March 16th. However, every printed copy of the book was sold during the pre-order window. I have ordered more stock, which will hopefully be here soon. In the meantime, if you’d like to read it you can pick up the digital PDF version here.