PROMPT: Why Do You Write?

I love to write. I live to write. I have to write — it’s like food or oxygen, without it I would cease to be.

I write because I used to stutter and still ocassionally do. My mind quiets, focuses, and works through my fingertips, flying across the keys unburdening my soul. Getting my thoughts out of my head and into the light gives validity to what I’ve experienced and the conclusions I have drawn. Writing is cheap and effective therapy, which is therapy that may help others that are where I have been.

I write because I was denied such a luxury to have a voice, while in active abuse. Writing is freedom through expressing my own thoughts and free-will. I was married to and abused by a Narcissist. Everything had to be focused on and all about him and only HIM. I was strictly forbidden from writing for a very long time. His jealousy became so bad, that he’d read through personal journals, ripping out pages where I had written my personal thoughts, eventually throwing the journal away (eventually all that would remain would be an empty cover). He would read through books that I was reading for pleasure, then tell me he didn’t want me to read such “trash,” that I was “getting grandiose ideas in my head” about being great: when I was less than average and clearly needed him. To be honest, I didn’t know he knew what the word ‘grandiose’ meant and he’d even used it correctly in a sentence! He was trying kill my personality and my free will, which he’d previously proclaimed to love SO much! I was turning into. a husk of what I once was: so full of creativity and zeal.

And lastly, I write for my sanity. I write to bare small bursts of my soul. My writings reflect my true feelings, my struggles, my dreams and desires. My writing is where I can express who I am and where I am going. I write to keep my mind on track and my wit razor sharp. I will write and put it away for a while, only to read it later and marvel at that version of my self that penned those wise words. I might even swear someone else wrote it. The creation of stories, knitted together by words, meets me where I am IN THAT MOMENT.

Writing is just, well, life. “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” –Anaïs Nin