Now’s about the time I attempt to write to myself, try to talk to me about what’s happened to my head in a feeble, ailing, failing effort to render my deep, dark, pitiful mind functional to maybe churn out one more piece of writing or drawing, or perhaps both; perhaps at the same time, to piece together what went wrong with my mind, when, where, how, and why. My form sits on my new bed, my legs resting awkwardly, but comfortably, on the mahogany footboard, my feet dangling in the air, notebook in lap, pen in hand, and face staring at the numerous cross outs, zigzags, dashes, and angry doodles pock-marking the page that bore nothing but a failure to communicate with my head, a failure to create, a failure to be myself. I had slowly become horrible at everything I identified as ME with; I could no longer draw, remember medical trivia, name off exotic flowers, or build toothpick structures.

Now I couldn’t write.

And that terrified me.

My mother always said that the instant I could no longer create was the instant I was no longer myself; I would still be her child, my name would still be spelled the same way, I would still have long, one-sided conversations with inanimate objects, but I wouldn’t be myself.

And, woe is me, she was right.

The blank drawing paper to my right and the polluted page of notebook paper on my lap were evident of my slow spiral into the depths of creative hell, the demise of my head coming with a whimper, like my mother said, and not a bang like I hoped. The end of a creative streak was always the same, boring, frustrating end: it just ended.

That’s it. Poof. Nothing.

But I was determined to hold on; years of self-loathing had lead me to hold onto my identity in a vice grip. I had struggled through blood, sweat, and tears to seat my crown firmly over my head, and no one was going to knock it crooked anytime soon.

So I grasped my creativity by the tail, and followed it into the abyss, where the sun was silent, where the moon had died, and where the light bulb was an unknown concept. The world I had landed in was plain, a black canvass with no walls that I could feel, no voice that I could hear, no sound that I could make, and no reflection I could talk to. Nothing. But cold; oh so very cold. Did I go insane? Did I lose my firm grip on reality? Surely I had not.

Or had I?

Who was to tell me?