Why I Write

Why I Write
Writing marks the time and passages of my life. I go back to read the raw pain I experienced before life granted me the serenity to see the situation in perspective. Sadly there will always be parts of life that exist as scabs you pick at in order to lick the wounds once again. I try to gain strength by looking back to know that I will survive today and what may ever appear in the future.

I write to communicate into the future to my children or whoever else will stumble into my journals when I am past this world. Passing into the future what I thought, what hurt me, and most of all what gave me the greatest joy.

I write when memory returns to me of childhood games, loved ones passed on, and crazy days spent with my family. In writing I can return to when life was simple, all things were possible, everything was new and exciting. I can write about those people no longer breathing, who live on today through me. Love lives on.

I believe it is important to write about the dark and frightening experiences of my life. I write about those things I wish I never saw, that I never knew. I write to acknowledge what parts of these things are not my faults. I write to see where my understanding of that place and time is to me today. Can I see as an adult why the adults around me when I was a child made the decisions they did? Will I ever forgive the ex-husband who abused me?

When I write I must be honest to myself. I cannot be a victim to the rest of the world’s actions. I must acknowledge my own role. Take responsibility for my actions. Writing makes me reflect upon what events are choices, decisions, divine intervention, or absolute flukes of chance.

I want to send into the future a picture of my impression of the world at this moment in time. I spend my time observing the world. Writing gives me the excuse to take an odd job if I feel it might be interesting. I can go hang out in the middle of a protest to connect with the energy of the crowd. I try things from all ends of the spectrum in this world from my vegan hippie grandfather in Northern California to experiencing the most un-natural of places in the world: Las Vegas, then gazing toward the true edge of the world off Hawaii. I have friends who are drag queens, housewives, Sunday school teachers, computer geeks, and politicians. Everyone I meet has something to teach me if I am willing to observe, digest, and listen.

I walk down a path of contemplation following in the same direction as many before me. I can look at their footsteps in the mud, and humbly make my own impressions alongside. I read the journey of others to understand unique impressions about this world. I have to believe that my observations are no less valid or interesting. Only time will tell this to be so.