View from the inside: A writers perspective on healing the world

#payitforward

I wouldn't say I worry about my writing. No worry isn't the word I would use at all. I don't worry about who reads my work, it is up to them if they continue to read it after they have realized it was written by me. I don't worry about my content, because once again if you continue to keep reading after you've glimpsed what I am writing about, it is more of a proceed at your own risk. I don't worry about the points that I try to make, I try to articulate everything I have to say as clear as I can. Granted I know they may come off as wacky, convoluted, snarky, sass and insert your own adjective here but I think I get my words out eventually. I will tell you what I "worry" about. My biggest "thing" I guess you would call it is wondering if I am touching anyone out there. I want to know that what I have to say is relevant to someone else and not just this big point that I have made in my mind. I want to know that in my manic phases and my borderline withdrawals I have not overstimulated my ego enough to think that my writing is SO GOOD that I am touching people's lives when I am merely performing a literary masturbatory dance on a platform for the world to see. I mean some of you may be into that sort of kink and if that's the case, go ahead and watch but I mean to affect the world.

I remember being younger, younger by days, months, years and just wanting something to touch me in a moment so that I would know that I wasn't so very alone. That is how I took to the written word in the first place. I would crank up the music (much like the very 90's playlist I have pumped in the background) and sit down and just write. I could write and write and write and cry or laugh or snicker bitterly at what they would never read and that would be my haven. I remember the first time someone read what I had to say, they told me that I wrote well and that I should think about writing for a living. I remember thinking that they needed to mind their own business and keep their fucking hands off my stuff. But in my mind's eye (I hate that phrase) I dreamed of what it would be like to write for a living. I dreamed of an open-air studio, a hammock, scarves around my head, a typewriter (yes I had one as a kid and I would love to have one again) and just chronicling my life. I dreamed of taking people on adventures of the soul on journies through the mind and spirit. I wanted to touch people with my words.

Then that harsh hand of reality struck, as it always does, and I was forced to think about the future. About how writing held no real money and how I should focus on what I really wanted to do. But I REALLY wanted to write. OBVIOUSLY, I didn't know better. So my writing went into journals and random blogs online. My poems went to those whom I loved and lost, who may or may not have deserved them at the time. Who knows, maybe pieces of me are still out there, in memory boxes of those who I wrote them to, little pieces of my soul scattered around the world, or maybe people aren't as sentimental as I am. I still wrote as much as I could, I was still told that I should keep writing, but my words had taken a different tone, a darker one and as my mental health turned inward it continued to reach toward the light from a very dark place. It became a cry for help and when it wasn't a cry for help, it was undauntingly the whispers of a soul crying for the loss of those she loved, used in eulogies of all who had passed from her life.

Journals upon journals, half empty pages, torn out half written scribbles, they fell out of the boxes I had packed them in when I finally moved into a place that could hold them all. It had been years since I wrote anything of substance. I had shifted my mental focus on the two lives I had grown within and given up all hope of touching anything but their lives. Through my struggles to become a better mom and a better person I was starting a journey to figure out exactly who that person was. As I came across the whisperings of yesteryear everything clicked back into place. I remembered how desperately I needed that someone to take my hand and pull me through my darkest hour. I felt that tug again because it wasn't too long ago that I once again needed that person. It had only been a few years since I almost lost myself to a diagnosis I did not understand. I felt as if no one could understand me. I did not know how to be a single mommy, let alone one that had this undeniable feeling of being alone all the time. I needed a shoulder, a hand, a heart to open to mine and show me the light. I found what I needed to pull me through and though there are still days I yearn for the caress of words to make the struggle so much better; What I want for more is to reach through that void and grab the hands of someone else faltering, even if only to tell them that they are not alone.

I feel sometimes that my words as not enough, that they will come of convoluted or even superior to the struggles that the demons inside take you through on a daily basis. And to that I have no words other than I am here, feel me with you, I have been there, hold on tight, I promise I get it. I do not think myself above even the lowest of days, the days of mascara streaked cheeks, of blanket nests, of the desperation that looks like a razors edge. I know the bleakest of grays and blacks but I know the glimmer of yellows and pinks, the glitter of the snow as it falls over the scars that have long since healed. And if it is only for a moment that I can hold you in my arms and let you see the world, see the hope, see yourself through my eyes;Let me show you the way.