So here’s the deal. I think I have officially lost the right to call myself anything remotely close to a creative and artistic person. I have definitely foregone any right I had to call myself a writer. Which is such a damn shame because those things used to be such an important part of my identity. They were things that calmed me, excited me, made me feel good about myself and want to rage and scream at my open word document or canvas all the same. I don’t even fucking read for fun anymore unless it’s bullshit short stories because that’s all my pea brain has the attention span for these days. It’s like, with the complete and utter lack of motivation I have to do any of that now that I am either working 9-5, going to classes and sapping my brain dry with coma-inducing legal reading and writing, or too drained to do anything else.
The sad part is that I know, if I were a stronger, more disciplined person, I could make the time. After work, between classes, whenever. Instead I spend that free time watching mindless YouTube “Top 10” videos, drinking until I fall asleep assisted by the spare bottle of vodka I always have stashed away in my room so that my roommate won’t see me constantly back and forth in the kitchen to get to the alcohol cabinet and recognize that I, quite possibly, have a problem (side note: come back to this, it’s a big fucking problem), or, most often, staring into space and doing absolutely fuck-all. I don’t even run anymore. It’s like, now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve lost everything about myself that made me a person in the first place, all of my go-to topics when asked about things I loved. Now, if someone asks me what my hobbies are or what I do for fun, I genuinely draw a blank, because I really don’t do anything anymore. Nothing that brings me any sort of joy, at least. Sometimes I still have the gall to say “reading and writing and running” because I can’t say “more often than not, literally nothing” as if I have any right to define myself by those treasures anymore when I haven’t actually connected with any of them in years.
And I get that people change and interests change and that’s okay, I don’t have to define myself by the things I did five or so years ago. The problem is that those things weren’t replaced with any new hobbies or joys or healthy interests, they were filled with nothing and nothing and more nothing, and the occasional really fucking bad habit. I just miss being me, or at least knowing who “me” was. Having things that brought me joy, things I was decent at, things that I miss so fucking much but can’t find a way to bring back. It’s like the life’s just been sucked right out of me, and the world is much less beautiful looking at it through these eyes. That all sounds super-fucking-dramatic but that’s where I’m at right now. Might revisit some old writing in the hopes that it might spark something but who knows. Anyone else have these kinds of problems? If so, did you ever get past them? I just want to rediscover the things I used to love — the things that made me, me.