I write with hostages in my head

Writing is not a painless act. It is also not a victimless act. It’s pitiful, and most of the time I feel like I make a mockery of the poet laureates that existed before me. But it is an act ingrained in me, not like oxygen but a morning routine, that if I were to forego it, I could sense its absence in my life. It will eat away at me until I acknowledge the missing piece, forcing my hand to pen and paper. It’s the act of cutting fruit. I take a knife and carve out pieces of myself. A slice off my finger, here is my first love. Shaving off a chunk from my shoulder, here is the eating disorder I struggle with. Whittle away a piece of my hip, here are my best friends. My left ear, my first heartbreak. My kneecap, the months that pass me by. Writing is not a painless act, and I have scars all over my body to prove it. 

I live with such a sensitivity that I can not seem to find solace for my thoughts and fears and dreams except through prose. I believe myself to be so fragile, so sensitive, but so is everything else. And sometimes, living with this glass body and this dangerous amount of sensitivity is just something I have to do, and at the end of my lifetime, it is so much better to live with this tender heart than to live without gusto at all. This softness that is in me keeps me alive, it keeps my creativity beating, and it allows me to feel deeply thus expressing myself freely. I am still learning how to keep this gentleness in me from bruising.

When it comes down to its bare bones, my writing is an experiment of my consciousness. It’s not only an attempt to record the external world but also the inexorable, constant thoughts that plague my every waking moment. It’s a place for me to document the ideas that only brush up against the edges of my mind, lingering for a second and then gone the next instant. So whenever someone tells me they’ve read something I’ve produced, it’s a shock to my system, like jolting awake from a pleasant dream (or a harrowing nightmare). It feels as if they plunged their hands into my chest, arms deep in my secrets, blindly searching for my heart, fingers knocking on my ribs and poking at my lungs. They refer to something I’ve said about the month of October and it feels like they’ve peeled open the flesh on the back of my head, flash photography into the open cavern of my brain. Though my writing is not private, others witnessing the vulnerability sewn into my words and sentences will always initially feel like a violation.

That is the scary part of projecting my image into the public sphere. When people who read what I put out can derive my identity from just a paragraph of my thoughts, I fear that something will be lost, some core of my personality diluted, some sense of authority I have over my sense of self sacrificed. But it does not always remain in this feeling of betrayal. I am a deep well, my mind and my soul. All one can do is imagine what comes floating to the top every once in a while, my words at the surface of the water, never the whole thing.

 Like two sides of the same coin, the feeling of shock dissolves into one of appreciation, of validation. It triggers this feeling deep inside my gut, one I can’t quite put into words, but it’s a warmth that seeps into my limbs, reaching even the coldest parts of me. I can’t express what it’s like for someone to take the time out of their day to consume pieces of my heart that I’ve put onto paper. Everyone who has read my writing has taken a fragment of me with them, whether they know it or not. That is why I will never get down on my knees again for someone to read what I write. Never again. Begging someone I once loved to hear my voice, and listen to what I have to say. You love me, but not enough. I loved you, but too much. 

My writing is something sacred to me. Why do I write it all down? To remember, of course. The impulse to continue writing is compulsive, and it’s inexplicable to those who do not share the same urges. Writing is hostile. At times, it feels like I am trying to impose my ideas, my perspective into someone else’s mind. I’m wrenching their imagination around my own, trying to wire it the same way mine is. Sometimes, it feels like I am overwhelmed with words I do not have and emotions I can not articulate. Sometimes, a blank page is my worst enemy and my greatest fantasy. I know that it will always feel like I’m searching for a phrase, a line of text, a singular word that will release everything that’s pent up in me. Writing forces me back into the past, reliving memories I want erased and meeting people I no longer know. It sits next to me in the present, extrapolating every fiber of anger, affection, grief, sympathy, fervor, sadness, joy, from my bloodstream and into the keyboard. It is not a painless act.

My writing, it’s all nonsense. It’s romanticism, it’s holy text, it’s a torrent of consciousness put into words. It’s all a myth, it’s my first love. It’s catastrophic, but ultimately, it will always be art.