Growing up made writing an immense effort that I evaded because it took a huge toll on me, making every inch of my skin shudder, and then stopping my fingers on the last letters I wrote, giving up.
Reality can be monstrous, causing the tips of your fingers to freeze, as if losing all the vocabulary you once had to a storm of silence, or worse, passivity. You live a year or a few months full of life, with all its ups and downs, and you literally can not write a single word about any up or down days. A couple of lines of yours are scattered everywhere on your computer, your notebook, and your phone, trying to say what’s inside but nothing comes out more than old, perhaps archaic, words you’ve used a thousand times before, and a couple of lines is all it takes for you to throw your papers and just give up; give up to what? I’m not sure. Sometimes what’s eating at you is fear of words, other times it’s lack of self-confidence, but the end result is one: not writing.
Writing was once my refuge, my home; a place, or rather a paper and pen, I went to when I felt a couple of lines swim in my head, wanting to get out to the sun; to light. The words I feel are thrown in every corner of my being unable to gather themselves, take a deep breath, and come out to the light. Sometimes I feel a storm in me about to hit my fingertips and release all those bleak seasons inside. Or perhaps, unbeknownst to me, there is a prison for words within that won’t let my words out to the fresh air remaining in my soul, if it is still there, that is.
Dear words, I don’t know how much longer will I hold on, and how often will life throw its experiences at me, experiences that render me even more speechless by the day. I wish it were easy, to find the place where one once was and return to. But it isn’t.
I stopped tens of times during this flow of reflections, in one sitting. I stopped once out of fear, once out of hesitation, and ten times out of un-wordiness, sometimes combined.
Silence has already made a point in letting me know how deep it is, deeper than words, deeper than life itself. But so long as I’m breathing, words add life to my life; let silence take the lead in my funeral.
Liesel Meminger once said, “I want words at my funeral, but I guess that means you need life in your life.”
