i wander, as lonely as a cloud.

when you just can't write, you don't.

This particular newsletter was hard for me to publish, mostly because it meant that I had to admit what I’ve known since I moved to St. Croix: I don’t know who I am on the island. And this lack of identity has impacted my writing to the point where I just…can’t. At least not right now.

I tell my mother that she must have been a philosopher or a pastor or a really popular self-help author in a past life. Like me, she sees life through metaphor-tinted glasses: the smallest details—the crooked tree, the unexpected rainbow, the conversation in passing—spark deep thoughts about life and faith.

And like me, she writes about them from time to time.

I called her the other day, just to talk. Vent, really. I needed a Mom Mini-Sermon.

“I don’t know who I am anymore,” I told her. As I said this, I slumped to the concrete floor of the balcony outside of my apartment. Night had fallen. I was alone. The light of the streetlamp filtered through wind-tossed trees, creating eerie shadows across my legs.

I felt empty. Depleted. Spent. And ashamed.

I watched the waning moon peek in and out of light-rimmed clouds, passengers on a journey to cross across someone else’s sky. I listened to my mother do what she does best: offer advice.

“I took a picture the other day. Of an unusual cloud,” she mused, knowing that I, like her, can easily slip into the familiar comfort of a metaphor. I waited, expecting her to tell me what it all means. To weave together the everyday and the woo seamlessly.

Instead, she said, “Maybe you can write something about it.”

My chest seized at the thought of writing.

It was as if all of the clouds above me and around me and inside of me rushed to join together, cocooning me into this state of refusal. Of creative inertia. Of silence.

“You should send it to me,” I said, trying to keep the note of defeat out of my voice. I felt my phone buzz, but I refused to look at the picture.

I couldn’t bear to once again be reminded that I have nothing at all to say right now.

Hannah calls me a few days later.

I’m relieved to hear her voice, to see her face—without her saying a single word, I know she gets how I feel. I know that she, too, is speaking to me from the compost pile—a place where creative people go to decay and fall apart, in hopes that we will bloom again one day.

I tell her how terrible it feels to try to write these days. How awful it feels to see how beautiful and magical and spiritual the island clearly is and have nothing to say about it all.

Writing, the thing that has always felt the easiest for me, has become a heavy albatross around my neck, dropping me to my knees.

Writing, the thing that has always felt most like me, has become a river of sand, sliding through my fingers. I chase after it fruitlessly, because I don’t know who I am if not this.

Writing, the thing that has kept me sane, has become a panic button that I press, over and over again, hoping that something will come save me from the crushing, wordless silence.

Hannah nods her head silently as I speak, affirming me and validating me as I wallow in the compost of my identity. She looks so wise, dressed in forest green and leaning forward on her couch with the late-afternoon California light filtering in from behind.

She tells me what I don’t want to hear.

“You never took a break,” she points out. “Not really. And you need time. Rest. You need to let yourself settle. What would happen if you stopped?”

My brain screams no no no. My body cries out yes yes yes.

I know what I must do. I have to truly walk away.

This is the picture that my mother sent me.

I see myself in that half-formed mermaid tail of a cirrus cloud, trying to find her place in a new sky. My edges are raw, unformed, almost painful in appearance.

Undefined. Shifting.

When I decide to take up the pen to write about what I see when I look in the mirror, it is already too late. I have already changed. And to try to pin myself to the page, to trap myself in the confines of words, would be akin to telling a cloud to stop changing just so you can take a photo of it.

I need to break apart, knit back together, and break apart again and again. I need to wander for a bit. And maybe, eventually, I’ll cross back over this sky again. Maybe some other sky.

All in good time. For now, I wander.

Perhaps the most radical thing I will ever do as a writer is to know when I must stop writing.

If you are a subscriber of this publication, thank you. Thank you for believing in me and my words. I am pausing all paid subscriptions as of 2/10/2023. If you chose to support me under an annual membership and wish to receive a refund, please shoot me an email, and I’ll make that happen.

Writing that last paragraph was really, really hard for me.

I’d be lying if I said that I don’t feel like a failure, but truthfully, I know that continuing to write from the place I’m in right now would be counter to who I am as a creative person. I want to be authentic and true, and that’s hard to do when you have no idea who you are anymore. And it’s hard to know who you are when you’re constantly in motion.

I know this post feels like déjà vu—after all, didn’t I say I was taking a break back in December?

Yep. I did. But I didn’t really do it.

Capitalism, hustle culture, and my own inner critic told me that, if I stopped, I would never start again. And that message comes from a place of distrust of myself, something I’m hoping to heal in this time away from creating.

Again, thank you for reading my writing. See you later.