Loop-the-Loop: How I Got Over Writer's Block

Delaney Couri

When I was in elementary school, I went to an amusement park with my family that had a roller coaster with a loop. I couldn’t have been older than seven, but I was ecstatic that I was finally tall enough to ride. So, while my siblings and my dad watched, my mom, myself, and my new stuffed fox (won at the park that day) wove our way through the line. The whole time I was jumping up and down with excitement and anticipation, proud of myself for going on my first loop-the-loop ride. And then when we were first in line ready to go and the gates began to open to let us on, I panicked. Screaming, crying, flailing, the whole nine yards. It was too late to back off, so as my mom held my hand and I clung to my fox, tears streaming down my face, I experienced my first loop-the loop-roller coaster.

When I got off, I had stopped screaming and crying, realizing that, somewhere amidst the anticipation, then the excitement, then the fear, I had done it.

I told my pastor last week that I had writer’s block. “This has never happened to me before,” I said. “I normally write for stress relief; I write to live. And yet, I can’t seem to do it lately.”

She looked at me, with the infinite wisdom that I always see sparkling behind her eyes, and said, “It’s because you can’t acknowledge what’s happening in your life. You seem okay, you maybe are okay, but you’re in the midst of a lot of changes. You’ve spoken them, but when you write them, they’ll be real. So, maybe that’s why you can’t write.”

I don’t go to the same church anymore. I’ve been meaning to leave, to find a new church home that isn’t ruled by a book of discipline that keeps me out of its ranks. Then, the other day, I realized I was done. But I still attended virtually on Sunday, because I was at a loss of what else to do. So, I don’t know where I go to church right now, but it isn’t the same as it has been for seven and a half years, in a denomination I have been a part
of for twenty-five years. And it is really, really hard to write down.

My friend is going home. And I can’t write much more than that, because I don’t know what else to say. I’m so happy for him. And feeling a deep sense of loss. And it is really, really hard to write down.

I have a new job. I pushed back a research assistantship to another semester to take on a course. It was a big and small decision, it was easy and it was hard, and it’s hardly been a week since I made that choice. And the logistics are fairly inconsequential, but the way the decision traveled from my head to my heart is huge. I am a teacher. This was my first semester being out of a classroom in four years and it left me with a void that I didn’t
know was there until I decided to fill it with last week’s decision. I am a teacher and I have known that for a while, but I have never written it down. Because, for some reason, it is really, really hard to write down.

I could keep writing these windows into my life for days and I know the same is true for everyone I have surrounded myself with. Collectively and individually, we are all still going through it, like we have been for the past two years. And my losses, changes, and realizations are so, so small in light of others. But I still feel them all. And if I don’t let myself feel them, admit them, write them, I know that they’ll manifest in far less savory ways. Like inexcusable fits of rage or intractable bouts of sadness, aimed at those I love and aimed at myself. If I’m being honest, these consequences are too big to bear, so blogging felt like a much safer option.

So, as I take time to look up and around for the first time since classes started four weeks ago, I see the changes and the rubble left behind. And as I look forward, I can’t see much of an end to the barren wasteland. But, for some reason, I am unafraid. Maybe it’s because I have faith. Faith that, just like that time I rode my first loop the loop roller coaster almost twenty years ago, someday soon, after the yelling, kicking and screaming
has stopped, and the tears have dried from my cheeks, I’ll look up and realize, I did it.

We did it.