The Beauty in the Breakdown
“Cause I just couldn’t open up, I’m always shifting.” — “Hallucinogenics” by Matt Maeson
It was a Thursday, the day I submitted the final manuscript of my book. And right on time, I fell apart.
I am no stranger to breakdowns. Whether I like to admit it or not, my heartstrings are fragile things somewhere outside of me that shiver at the slightest breeze. Doctors and therapists and psychiatrists and personality assessments have all taped on different labels to help explain why this is, but no one label paints the picture perfectly. To put it simply, I feel a lot, and I feel intensely. If my emotional self had a volume knob, it would be set to fortissimo.
It wasn’t until fourth grade that I began to wobble with the reverberations of intense negative emotion. Before then, I lived in a happy fairytale. I knew I was adopted, and this was what made me so unique and special. But when the bubble began to break, I didn’t have the words or tools to adequately cope with what I was experiencing.
Now that I’m older and I’ve mapped out the traumas that have made me who I am, I can trace the blood droplets back to the cord cutting, the first heartbreak, the first time I disappointed my parents, and all the other firsts that, one by one, primed my heart to bleed so freely. And after that first big break in middle school, I’ve been attempting (and failing) to wall off those emotions.
I know that they are too loud for the people around me. That was the first thing I learned. I wasn’t responding to things the way I was supposed to. I wasn’t the picture-perfect little girl I used to be. I did my best to silence myself. But the thing about silencing my voice is that, eventually, the dam will break. And it did. Has. Will again. If you don’t let me speak, I will roar.
Depending on the person you talk to, they can tell you stories of previous breakdowns, times when I lost my mind, went into tailspins, lashed out, collapsed inwards. They might tell you about the time I ran away from home on foot, the times I got into fist fights, the times I back-talked my teachers because I was tired of being talked at instead of listened to, the heartbreaks that I cried about in the hallways of school, or the more dramatic falls of those first few years after high school. Falling into substance abuse, going to rehab, emerging to start school over, getting married, and having a baby. Divorce. And now this book.
But the thing is, if I’m going to live this life right, then I’m going to look everything in the face for what it is. I will always love with all my heart. I will always collapse afterwards. I will burn with rage, I will shake with ecstasy, I will argue with conviction, I will cry until the salt stains my cheeks, and I will laugh until I can’t breathe. The only thing I have to work on is coming to terms with the fact that the people who matter won’t mind. And those that do are free to leave. I have been silencing myself for far too long.
Writing Izzie’s story has helped me find a little bit of my own voice where my adoption is concerned, and it’s been one of the most intense experiences of my life. I’ve flown higher than ever before and the fall was just as dramatic.
I found an archived New York Times article that explores authors’ different experiences of finally calling their book complete. “Completing a book can be an exhilarating, draining, even traumatic experience for a writer, a time of fantastic hope and tremendous doubt,” Salzberg writes.
And I thought it was pretty spot on. Within the last couple weeks of intense editing and preening and finalizing my book, I began to cycle pretty wildly between believing fully in my genius and feeling like a naked clown on stage. I knew the fall was coming for me.
There’s a kind of obsession you have to have if you’re going to write a book from start to finish, and when the power to continue editing was taken away from me, I didn’t know what to do with myself.
Like a pregnancy, I had created life from nothing, given form to tears and laughter, given breath to something that would move people even after the pen left my hand. Turning in that final manuscript was the equivalent of pushing out the baby after so many months and collapsing into a puddle of my own blood. I was ecstatic that I had created. I was devastated that it was over. It’s so much power to be in total control of the things you create. It’s so much loss when you put on the final touches and let it sail into the world on its own.
It was a Thursday, the day I submitted the final manuscript of my book. And right on time, I fell apart.
Rose’s Locket, now available on Amazon, and BookShop, is a fictional novel about a girl’s exploration into her adoption and life’s meaning. If you want to connect, find me on IG @shannonrquist or my website www.shannonquist.com
