Fill in the blank

How is it that I used to find something nearly every day to blog about when I was in Europe, but now when I think about blogging I am overcome by a blankness mind and a vague sense of dread?

I remember sitting on an uncomfortable Spanish mattress in a tiny Spanish bedroom, legs outstretched beneath rough sheets and thin blankets that belonged to someone else. Each day I'd sit there and stare at my computer screen, at the cursor blinking in the blank text box, until something came to me to write about. I had so much more time then. Time and energy both. I worked less, looked around more, and took more naps. God I miss taking naps every day.

And now I'm faced with another blank text box, and my mind has gone blank in response. I've put a lot of pressure on myself to do deep, reflective thinking here and to bare parts of my Self that have long lain dormant, curled up tightly in the darkness, hidden even from me. Do I think every blog entry from now on must be a well-crafted, well-argued mini-manifesto? Or that each new entry must reveal some deep insight into life, love, and the pursuit of happiness? Yes. Ridiculousness.

Almost as soon as I announced that I want to be and express my whole true self, a mild embarrassment crept up on me. At the age of 33, shouldn't I know who I am? Shouldn't I know how to take care of myself? But I do not. So there is embarrassment to admit this, anger at not having been taught before now, and fear that I won't be understood. The blankness of mind is an unconscious repression of all the thoughts and feelings I am embarrassed to share.

I've had dozens of ideas for blog posts in the last few days. The ideas have been slavering and growling, crawling over one another to be the first out into the world. My mind isn't actually blank. But when I reach in to pick out an idea with which to fill this blank box, I encounter a blank. The camera zooms up to an aerial view. I am looking down on my mind, and I can see that the blank is actually a white wall. On one side is this heaving, slithering, clawing mass of ideas: desperate and dark. On the other side is an endless, sterile expanse of white. The wall was erected to keep the monsters in. To protect you from them. To protect me from your horror and disdain.