Insomniac Nightmares

Think of the Great Wall of China, they told me. Not the whole thing, but how it was built. One brick at a time.

I want to break free, to shatter the prison of wordlessness that surrounds me, to write again, but it’s hard. It’s a daunting task, looming over me, an ancient monolith that has judged me and found me wanting.

“Think of the wall,” I say. One brick at a time. In this case, one word at a time. I. Can. Do. This. It sounds weird in my head to spell it out like that, but it gives me hope. I reshape the mangled words into two sentences. “I can. Do this.” I remove a period. “I can do this.”

I keep chipping away, words falling from my fingers with trepidation at first, then replaced with gratitude, then glee as I hammer my keyboard. Did the bricklayers feel the same when they stopped seeing individual bricks and started to see the shape of what they were making? I have to think they did. It gives me hope.

It is like the Great Wall. You start small. A single brick, a single word. Then you add a few more, and a few more, letting it grow. It started small, but I hear you can see the motherfucker from space. Maybe my own wall will be like that too, someday.