Writing Workshop: My Therapy

Welcome back to your Writing Workshop.

At the bottom of this post you’ll find the widget to link up your posts. I hope you found a prompt to inspire you this week and help you create something unique, grown out of your own unique experiences and thoughts.

I’ve chosen the first prompt – what’s your therapy? Like Kerry-Ann, for me music is my medicine….

________________________________________________

I feel it building. That sense of panic. It is like a wave that starts down low, twisting my stomach as it rises up into my head, into my ears, filling them with a pressure that feels like being pushed, hard, down under water. I am drowning.

It could have been anything. Jumping out of the middle of a good mood like the very cruellest game of pass the parcel. Or it could have crept on, slowly. A day when time and patience and energy is sucked out of me drop by drop. Just one word, or lack of one. Too much attention. Too little. Who knows. My heart has it’s own mind, that’s all I know. I can control it as well as I can control the weather.

Whatever. I have given up trying to understand it.

Before long it is so strong I can barely see, barely think, barely speak. My hands start to fidget, mouth chewing at my nails, fingers pulling my hair up into ragged clumps, fists clasped and unclasped. My feet feel poised as if on a starting block. The need to run is so overwhelming it is all I can do to stay in one place, instead beginning to pace from room to room. I have to get out. I have to get out NOW.

A mumbled goodbye to Ant and my hand is on the door handle,  my bare feet slipped quickly into my shoes, fingers reaching up to plug in my stereo headphones before the door has even closed behind me.

I walk, fast. Striding quickly through the familiar streets as the light fades in the sky above me, my eyes low and full. I flick through the menu on my music player, letting instinct find what I need, one finger pushing the volume control up as loud as it will go.

The beats starts and my stride slows to match, my feet turning down the wooded cycle path that has acted as my therapy couch over and over. There is no one here, not a soul in sight down the long mile track, and, as the piano starts and deep vibrating lull of cello or guitar rises with the melody, I allow my shoulders and my neck to unclench. My body starts to sway, my head gentle nodding and shaking from side to side as my eyes close and I let my feet carry me forward and music drown out all thought, sweeping down every neural pathway, stroking every inch of skin. I feel every note, every rhythm. Behind my half focused eyes I feel washes of colour begin to flood my vision. I am oblivious to everyone, everything, the sideways glances of the occasional dog walker not even breaking my stride.

Lyrics wash over me like waves, somehow always finding the exact line and phrase to illuminate the dark place. Comfort, connection, reassurance. What I feel, what I am going through, it has been felt before. It is heard. It is real. I breathe it deep down, the emotion I am feeling. It is ok. I am ok. Pain and confusion and heartbreak and fear. It is ok. Right now I will give myself to it. I will stop fighting.

My mouth opens and I pour out the sound, words tumbling off my tongue as I sing to the empty night and to the dark trees and the shapes of the swifts as they swoop and dart. As loud as I can, my lungs filling with cool air, releasing with every breath.

Sometimes just one song, played over and over. The message I need to hear. Or an album, played straight through, every word as familiar to me as any word I have ever written. A part of me, integrated into my consciousness after obsessive listening, over and over. Thousands of songs, a library of life and experience and expression, what feels right that night so variable, as variable as my mood. It doesn’t matter: there is always something right, always the right pill for this ache. I just have to keep walking, and keep listening, keep singing if it helps.

Soon my panic has been released out with the sound. My limbs soft again, my muscles unknotted and my mind clear, my heart calm once more.

After half an hour, and hour, maybe even two some nights, the hard frown has been softened and my brow lies smooth again.

I am ok. I will not run this night. I will not break.

I am ok.

________________________________________________

So now it’s your turn. What prompt did you choose?

1. What’s your therapy?
- Inspired by Kerry-Ann at Falling Starlett who has been using music to give her inspiration and peace.

2.Tell us a story of something that happened with a bang.
- Inspired by Emma’s beautiful firework photos over at Me, the Man and the Baby.

3. Who’s your boss? Who (or what!) is in charge of you and your life?
- Inspired by Geeky Mummy’s four year old’s impeccable logic…

4. Share your experience of a difficult transition. A moving ‘from’ to ‘something new’.
- Inspired by the Bubbleboo and her son’s Transition Day at school.

And finally, the last prompt is just one word. This should allow you a bit more creative freedom if you feel like taking the safety harness that particular week.

5. Running
- Inspired by World of Walker who has been finding her running feet again

Leave your name and the URL to your post in the MckLinky below (the URL should be to your post not just to your blog) and leave me a comment to let me know you’ve taken part. If you have the time it would be great if you could try and read and comment on at least two other entries. And be kind! It’s supposed to be a bit of fun – we’re not looking for the next Booker Prize winner here.

If you haven’t had chance to respond yet, then you’ve still got till Sunday to enter your link! Or just wait till next week, when there’ll be five brand new prompts to get you thinking.

This Writing Workshop is brought to you in association with Mama Kat’s Losin’ It – who’s lovely author came up with the concept and runs her own workshop over in the U.S.

Related posts: