That Time I Lost My Words
Let’s hope I don’t lose them again
One day I lost my words.
I woke up that day, and every day since, the words weren’t there. Instead, a jackhammer attempted to break through my skull, loud, internally rattling, my brain violently slamming around, forcefully hitting the sides of my skull in quick, violent, and unpredictable patterns that did. not. end. Only an ice pack numbed the sensation, but the rattling did not stop. Once the ice melted, the coldness dissipated, and the numbness subsided, the pain returned.
This started 6 weeks ago. Today are the first substantial words I’ve written in 6 weeks.
I am a writer. Not in some lofty sense of a great novelist or essayist, but as a scholar and a teacher: a professor. My job is to think and write and teach. That’s it. The inability to write means the inability to do my job means the inability to attain the holy grail of lifetime employment means foiling a goal towards which I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, in essence mortgaging my family’s wellbeing. Not being able to write means not being able to put food on the table. We don’t have a safety net. No one is paying our rent or putting food on our table if I don’t have this job.
But, if I cannot write, I cannot write. I want to write, but I can’t. If I have lost my…
