"What Got Me Started" by Theresa Thompson

I don’t know quite how to explain it, but what got me started writing again was these Zoom groups, Writers for Recovery. I hadn’t been able to write for years, because I was so worried that my bipolar hypergraphia might rear its ugly head if I gave in and indulged myself with writing, the symptom where I can’t stop writing uncontrollably, even while driving in a car with my hardcover journal splayed open across the steering wheel, with me taking notes hurriedly as if my life most certainly depended on it, 25 miles to Lansing, 55 mph, Steer St, Clinton Street, Hunt’s Automotive 954-399-2424, man with red bowler hat holding a puppy, maybe a Cairn terrier, and on and on. I was afraid the writing would once again take me over, with me left subsumed under the ocean wash of frenetic activity gone mad. And I was afraid with my PTSD, what might happen -- with so many laid up traumas stashed underneath piles and piles of worn-out outgrown selves and personas, buried underground underneath where no one can see, not even me. But the writing is the mystery elixir which lures them back out, all those long ago stories and feelings wrapped around stories. Writers for Recovery gave me a way to tell my life in only 7 minutes, 7 minutes at a time -- just a hot air helium gasp escape, just letting out a tiny burble that expands into a mini-story, too hot to touch fresh out of the toaster but slowly cooling down as we listen to each other’s stories. Just enough to let some of the hot air steam escape but not long enough to bring on the annoying PTSD flashbacks I’d managed long ago to bury deep within myself. Writers for Recovery gave me a new outway to share the hurt of the past while becoming sane again.