I Want to Be a Daffodil

Coasting, taking it easy, moving at my own pace. All ways to describe the festering irritability related to my creative work.

I don’t produce enough. I am stretching myself thin. I design a new schedule, thinking it’ll fix the wayward patterns of my brain, or straighten out the kinks in my process, only to wipe it clean six days later after not committing to it. Finding it too stiff, boring, feeling all the weaker for it.

Is it not good enough? The prose I write, the truth I speak? Is my voice too weak? Do I not command the attention of the space I so desperately want to take up? All I hear is crickets and the sound of doors opening for others as I wait for my turn. All I feel is my own internal monologue, heavy as the woollen jumper I wear in late winter, on a cloud-smothered day, scratching the tender skin of my arms, red and raw.

I want to cry, scream, rip the void of persuasive uncertainty out from under me and throw it down some gapping storm gutter to wash away to sea faraway where I never have to consider it again.

I am convinced there are things I have to say, stories to share and songs to sing, but I stare, paralysed at a blank canvas, unsure if the truth will hurt everyone I love, eventually twisting its flexible body back around to hurt me. Is my honesty genuine or does it just seem that way? Coated in a hard shell of defiance and trust-related issues, half-conscious or fully aware, I am led back to the page day after day.

You don’t care, the audience, and I mean that with all due respect; I am but a puppet on a channel you skim past, hoping to be entertained. And if I don’t jump high enough, plead low enough where my sternum touches the ground, you flick by as if I were never even there, your valuable gaze held longer on something that can be monetised and sold back to you in ways you’ll never fathom.

Your attention is fried, and I am begging to be seen, witnessed, slowly, gloriously, as softly as a daffodil in spring. But your patience begs otherwise, and mine too. Scorned by my own attempts, I cut the flowers before they even begin to bloom.

The doctor said we could try antidepressants if the mood continues to sour, and the bad weeks continue to leave a stain on the good days. Still, I said I have hope that I am not depressed, just upset, and wanting, and self-diagnosed delusional for believing there is something more than this, this odd waning of the sun, where night never fully falls. But I just can’t make it out yet.

Now, as I wade through the lonesome trenches, once again, I am not so convinced by the ramblings in my head. Or am I? I’m still here, still showing up and that stands for something, even if that too I am yet to trace the outline of.

I felt this hunger as a teenager. Where nothing could satiate. No amount of food, or steps in a day, or boldly coloured dress could make me feel full. And occasionally, I am reminded of it, but the tripwires are no longer so high, so invisible. If the spiral is the stage, I am most certainly in the spotlight, and hell, I guess I’m putting on a show.