I have talked in previous posts about my current struggles and have posted a number of times on the struggles of other women in relation to issues of discrimination. I am meant to be writing a book on (to strip it to its bare essentials) what it means as a woman to be free. However, I have, for some months, been unable to write. I have sat down in front of my computer, trying to will and force myself into this task, but my brain has resisted every impulse. To say that it is because I have been too stressed and unwell is true but I need a bit more of an answer than that if I am going to be able to get through what appears to be this impenetrable writer’s block.
They say that women are inclined to be governed by their emotions, as if men either don’t have them, or if they do, are somehow better able to restrain such tendencies (lazy stereotypes abound). For me, the emotional and the intellectual have always gone hand in hand. I am not able to have one without the other. It should come then as no surprise to me that my current state of emotional stuntedness is having knock-on effects on this creative endeavour. Berating myself only seems to make things worse.
Today, I started to see this for what it was. How can I write a book on what it means to be free when I am being slapped about with all the reasons that women are not free, and being silenced to boot? Such a task cannot materialise whilst in the throws of oppressive manifestations, but can only start to be realised once one starts to move out of that place and feel again, freely; express oneself openly. To put it another way, the freedom and desire to create does not rest easily with the armour of war.
Where does this leave me? With, I suspect, an essentially private struggle influencing a public enterprise.
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