It is winter and I feel restless. I am consumed by what can only be described as a violent nausea. It is a physical sensation but it comes not from illness, and will not be soothed by disgorging my breakfast nor by any medicine. I cannot work out what will give respite to my discomfort. A brutal purging of some sort.

NAUSEA/ILLNESS/NAUSEA/ILLNESS/NAUSEA/ILLNESS/NAUSEA/ILLNESS/NAUSEA/

I write on the back of my notebook, covering the whole page. I scream into my duvet. I go outside and I run; I run until my lungs signal my body to stop.

Time passes. As the mornings get brighter and the days longer, my bouts of mystical nausea become less frequent, less real. Suddenly it is summer, and I find myself devoted to the cravings of my mind with a sense of complete untetheredness. I read without guilt, I write and I draw and I live in the real world so fully that those wintry spirals seem so nonsensical I'm not sure they were ever real. I feel creativity and fervid curiosity inhabit me and guide my behaviour again. I start to feel like myself.

Time passes. Time passes and like a current it pulls me along. I do not feel myself moving but I notice my surroundings change. The sky bleakens, the birdsong subdues, and I sleep well into the afternoon. I feel sluggish, empty, and my journal sits untouched at my bedside. Ideas are fleeting and even in moments of inspiration I do not have the energy to entertain it. During my sixteen-hour nights I dream of being pregnant and I awake disappointed that I am not. I retreat into myself and seek total isolation. My brain activity is low and the spells of nausea return. This time they come with a message. I want a baby. I need a baby. Inside I feel stagnant, perhaps rotten; I cannot discern between the two.

One evening, after a drawn out ritual of candles, incense, music and a shower hot enough to turn my dorm into a hammam (an attempt to spiritually decongest), I see my journal on the bedside table and I begin to write.

"Maybe this craving, this intense, primal, bodily longing for birth that I have been feeling these past months is not a physiological, but a spiritual one.

Is the essential, distinguishing characteristic of woman not to create? To ingest energy that, once internalised, is brewed and transformed into one of infinite possibilities of new, of original... and then she must push, must fight for this life, fight to return it to the world.

Write more, more, more. Untangle untangle untangle untangle untangle / comb through my brain like moving fingers through hair.

...The medium of words is a safe one. But it is insufficient. I do not dream in words."

I think of David Lynch, who found a way to project his dreams to the world. I engross myself in his sermon: visions, transcendental meditation, robotic routines, a complete surrender of energy to creative practices, and, simply, creating - unrestrainedly so.

And so, in an effort to mobilise my mind, I distance myself from distractions: no more social media, no more mindless stimulation. I never smoke or drink. I work on my sleep pattern and I wake up to an analog alarm clock, I do the crossword and some morning stretches from my bed and have a protein-rich breakfast. I take my SSRI’s when the reminder goes off and I leave the house everyday - most days I meet my goal of 10,000 steps. I immerse myself in literature, films, video essays. I try to learn, I try to be curious. I try to be passionate.

Still, something inside me feels stuck. Any initiative I take inviting myself to create is met with aversion. Nausea. I realise that there is no formula for creation, productivity, motivation. What I have is a deciduous spirit. All I can do is wait for spring.