I Write

It all started one sunny Arizona afternoon while I was laying belly down on my red, white, and blue comforter under my swag red ball lamp, writing into Dear Diary the words “why doesn’t he like me?” soon to be blotted with tears.

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I write to find purpose to my existence when I’m not titled mother, employee, co-worker, sister, aunt, friend, ex, her. There is so much of me that I don’t know. If I had the opportunity to sit across from me as another person does, what would I think of me? Would I like me? Would I think of myself the way I see myself of the way someone else does? Because I am so many different people during the course of the day I realize it’s easy to detour from my destination. Writing roots me. It grabs me and excites me and allows my inner Horton to shout out. I have heard an expression that goes something like “you are nobody until somebody loves you” and I find that to be so sad. It should go more like “you are somebody even when nobody loves you” because then you would have to laugh. Somebody always loves you. Somebody that you have met in your lifetime has felt your presence and will carry that memory eternally. How wonderful is that?

Writing lets me jet from one thought to the other. Writing doesn’t care if I am incomplete in my thoughts because it allows me to be a child again, it allows me to live in a mental moment where all that matters is those few words which remind me of a few others then a few others and before you know it I find that I am pouring out of myself who I am and what I feel and how I believe and realize that I exist. I have the right to air space. I am entitled to a voice, a thought, a perspective of the world no matter what my influences or environment has been. I matter. If I choose, I can go back to each of these words or sentences and explore them or choose to file them away. Choosing to file away is a decision. Doing and not doing are decisions. Confirmation of existence.

My writing tends to be based on my emotions. If I’m feeling fun I write happy. If I feel sad I write melancholy. If I feel angry or hurt I write to vindicate. Writing this way is extremely undisciplined but infused with passion. When my emotion doesn’t fall into a category and I feel that I don’t want to write ever again, I write alone, just for me. Whatever I want to say and however I want to say it is the way it’s written.

Sometimes I find things out about myself I’d rather not know. Sometimes I find out that a belief or feeling that I thought came from me actually did not. It was what I thought I should have felt or thought but in writing to find the truth, I peeled off another layer of my existence. I’m beginning to realize that only in writing do we truly see ourselves as we are.

I write, to make sense of things that matter to me at the time they matter, and to make sense of me. I think clearer when I write because I can’t betray myself. The words drain out of me like a sieve and not one is left unwritten. They make me write them, they make me see what I would rather leave locked in my mind and not think about. Writing doesn’t let me omit. It’s like the elementary rule of math –show your work. The ins and outs and whys and why nots expose themselves until only the bone remains. You can’t deny naked.

I believe it is most difficult for people to realistically describe themselves as we are slanted in our definitions of who we are. We confuse who we are with who we aspire to become and although we try our very best to act “as if”, we still are not that person. Writing introduces you to that person. In writing I have discovered myself. I have discovered that I exist inside as well as out.