Everyone has their Kryptonite, the one thing that they are powerless against and sometimes can even cripple them. For some people it’s a certain food or drink, for others it can be a person that has them completely wrapped around their finger although interaction with them is always disastrous. My Kryptonite is doubt.
Doubt is a sneaky little bastard. Nothing consciously has to trigger it. I can just be going about my day and out it slinks from some darkened corner to attack. Suddenly it’s “Hi I’m your old pal doubt and everything you think and feel is wrong, or maybe it isn’t. Thing is you don’t know which and one wrong move could be fatal.” Yes, it’s a bit overdramatic, but when doubt hits it doesn’t really pull punches.
This morning I woke up with doubt straddling my chest, weighing me down to the bed. Or maybe it was just indigestion. I had dinner at my mother’s yesterday and although she makes the best southern food my body is never equipped to handled the great influx of carbs, salt, and oil that come along with the great feast. But I digress. Doubt got real comfy as I drifted in and out of consciousness, marking time by the local news program mumbling across the room and contemplating if I had enough energy to roll over and turn of the fan so my throat would stop hurt. I doubted it would’ve helped anyway.
The first pang of doubt hit, it was a simple one. I’m not going to complete my goal of Camp Nanowrimo. It’s the 22nd and I’m not going to be able to write 5,000+ words a day to get to 50,000 by the end of the month. Too many things have come up and I’ve let it slide badly. That wasn’t the doubt. That doubt was that I’ll ever reach that 50,000 word goal for Nano ever again. It was kind of easy to dismiss. July is much busier than November so I’ll try again then.
But doubt wasn’t letting go so easily. It clamped down on my wrists as I began to lift off the bed. “What if you just aren’t a writer anymore?” it purrs. It knows my weakness. I doubt a lot of things on a daily basis, I’ve come to terms with many. I doubt my looks, I doubt my popularity, I doubt my physical ability, I doubt people really love me. They are but little pangs now, like the small aches and pains of getting older; you aren’t happy with them but they become part of your day.
However I’m a storyteller, I need to tell people stories. Since I always doubt that people are really listening to me when I talk, I write. If I can’t write I might as well not exist. I didn’t write for a long time, I attempted to tell stories but really I felt like a ghost, invisible for years and years.
My productivity has declined greatly since it’s sudden reemergence a bit over a year ago. The logical part of me says it’s just because I’ve added things to my life, but doubt is there to remind me that it may not be the case. See doubt doesn’t have to prove it’s point, it just has to get you to question yours.
One would think that writing these simple words would be enough to dispel the monster of doubt but even now the whispers are still in my ears, swirling through my head; what if this entry is your last, what if the well of words has finally run dry…
Defying Normal 