My Return To Writing

The sun comes up another day and I’m still here. I’m still here physically – my heart is pumping blood and my hands are typing these words. My thoughts are in a magical land. They’ve been there for months now, running free with Dragon’s that swoop in to save the day and girls who brandish swords and smile in the mouth of their prey. It’s safe here, with Monsters so easily killed and lifetimes that can last forever. Here, I can lock myself in a room with thunderous voices that keep the darkness away. I can throw away the key and my Dragon’s spew fire any time danger approaches.

I’ve been hiding, is probably a better way to put it. It’s not so poetic, but it all boils down to this – lately I’ve grown to hate reality. There are no shiny perfect princes here, no hoards of trained giants to clobber your enemies – here, I mostly feel alone.

I stopped writing about reality when it became too hard to put my thoughts into something so painful. Doing so broke me even further, because writing about the real and the raw and the jagged is exactly why I love writing so much. Telling real stories about real people, learning the thoughts behind actions, delving into the why and the how – there is nothing I have ever loved as much as painful writing. But I stopped because no one was reading it, because I was bleeding onto pages for only myself and somehow that felt wrong.

So why am I here now, you ask? I’m not entirely sure. There is going to be no fine tuning here, no fixing this draft to make it perfect. What I write, I am going to submit just as it is, because I need to return to writing the real, and I never will unless I just do.

The world recently lost a woman who never should have left this soon. She was a beautiful light, a ray of sunshine on any cloudy day, such a selfless person that she made you want to be better just by being around her. And it turns out, as much as I thought I was bleeding for no one, I was wrong. To not know that she had been reading my words all along cut deeper than I ever would have thought it would, but it also opened my eyes.

I am going to write every word that has ever tumbled into my brain and I am going to write it even when the audience is only me. I am going to tear these words from my heart and let them spew wherever they fall on the page, because this is where I feel the most whole. Because I know she is still reading over my shoulder, and I will not let her down. Because the world needs more real, more broken and damaged amidst all of the photoshopped and perfect. Because writing is who I am, and I’m no longer willing to sacrifice that for anyone.