Channeling Quarantine Anxiety Into Poetry
How writing your own poetry can reveal beauty in an ugly time
For many, more time at home also means being stuck in one’s head more than one would like. For yours truly — Certified Overthinker Extraordinaire — this is especially true.
I’m no stranger to the darker depths of my mind, so it was not a surprise to discover that the deeper I dove within myself, the less I found to like. While COVID-19 threatens physical danger outside, more time spent inside creates mental space for anxieties that otherwise wouldn’t manifest —mental space to dwell on past mistakes, unfulfilled potential, and feelings of utter loneliness.
I’m not an optimistic person, so finding positivity in myself has always felt fake. Positive self-affirmations tend to taste hollow and pathetic in my mouth.
Instead, I yearn for the catharsis of unburdening myself from these difficult emotions to someone, or something. But I didn’t want to take any of my close friends or family to the places my mind goes when it’s darkest. Besides, most of my close ties have taken a hit since the pandemic started, and I didn’t feel like I could trust anyone.
I have never experienced so much anxiety until this past year. My chest would get tight, and the pit in my stomach would eradicate any appetite I might have had. The only thing faster than my racing thoughts was my heart rate. I would have to consciously make an effort to take full, deep breaths — the only thing that alerted me to the fact that my breathing was shallow and irregular in the first place. These are the telltale signs of my anxiety, and while they’re not the full-blown panic attacks that some people experience, these symptoms have been more pronounced lately than they’ve ever been in my life.
When I have things I feel I can’t tell another soul, I turn to paper. Journaling. It started to happen even before the pandemic, but since lockdown I’ve shifted almost completely from journaling in prose to journaling in poetry. It wasn’t a conscious decision; it just felt right.
Before, I always thought that poetry was a little bit pretentious — especially the modern-day stuff — but when I sat down to write it myself, I realized that there was actually very little ego involved. Instead, journaling in poetry feels like a lifeline, a light at the end of a narrowing tunnel.
The result? Hastily but earnestly pieced-together words and phrases that attempt to make sense of my frustration at this new world we all now find ourselves in. I don’t care how bad the poetry is, though, because little by little I feel it taking the weight off my chest.
I wrote about how doing calligraphy helps me cope with bad feelings. Writing poetry is the other thing that helps me cope.
There’s an inner poet in each of us. Forget being good. Being a poet simply means being attuned to the beauty around us, and being unafraid and patient enough to look it in the eye and find words to capture it. Being aware of the beauty — or brokenness — in ourselves and being brave enough to write about it. By allowing ourselves to feel whatever it is we’re feeling when we’re feeling it, we can exert more control over seemingly uncontrollable emotions.
I started writing bits and pieces of poems in the middle of last year, very irregularly but always deliberately. Every time I did, I would feel a strange, calm relief in my body, a miraculous feeling that I knew could not be replicated unless I wrote more, felt more.
Lockdown has given me ample opportunity for this level of inward — and outward — contemplation. Ideas have poured out of me naturally in various poetic forms. I didn’t realize I had so much to say until I said it.
Don’t get me wrong. Many of these poems are silly. I’m no expert in scansion or rhyme; instead, the pun seems to be my poetic device of choice. Whatever. It’s who I am. I embrace it. It makes me happy to relish wordplay. The levity buoys me through my darkest nights. And although they elicit groans of impatience from most, puns help me see the duality in things and even uncover deeper insight where I would otherwise see just one dimension. That, to me, is beauty.
To show you the truth about how rudimentary it is, here’s my attempt at a serious subject matter:
Indigo Flower
the perfect indigo flower I plucked
this morning
lives its last day of beauty
on my vanity.
by midmorning already there are
wrinkles and creases that don’t straighten.
the thin, delicate bloom
flops where it once bounced
in the wind.
by afternoon, it sags
a little more, molding to the flat tabletop.
by nightfall the bloom closes,
shriveled up, the brilliant indigo petals
that caught my eye across the street
disappear.
with a violence that shocks me,
I rip it asunder.
still, no color
just a broken daughter of mother nature
chosen for her beauty
dying prematurely
These poems are supposed to be rough (read: trash), but sometimes it’s still difficult to silence my perfectionist impulses. I’m not writing these poems for anyone other than myself, but that one person has high standards.
So I take a deep breath and repeat my favorite writing mantra:
Sometimes you have to wade through the trash to get to the treasure.
In fact, the roughness is part of the beauty. They say that poems can be edited ad nauseam and still not be considered “done.” In a (dare I say) poetic way, that process of revision mirrors life itself. We’re a constant work in progress. The sooner we accept that, the sooner we can start down the path of loving ourselves authentically.
So I will continue writing trash poetry if it means arriving at some treasure in the future. Or even if it doesn’t. It’s the process that soothes my anxiety, calms my racing thoughts. During such an ugly time, any glimmer of beauty we can find — or make for ourselves — is precious.
