Gemotions

He stared at the blank screen, the cursor blinking, a mocking metronome keeping time. The deadline loomed. The novel, the escape, the future he'd envisioned, seemed impossibly far away. The house, filled with echoes of his grandmother's life, felt like a prison. The silence was deafening, the solitude crushing.

He knew he should be writing, but the words wouldn’t come. The ideas he did have swirled around, unformed, like smoke in a draft. He felt a profound sense of… paralysis. He ran his hand through his hair, a nervous gesture he’d been making constantly for weeks. He closed his laptop and slumped back in his chair. He felt the familiar despair wash over him.