Paging Listeners

I’ve forgotten what it’s like to write with the idea that someone else will be reading it. Since I can remember, poetry oozed out of my brain and landed on every paper that gave me 5 minutes of its time.

I eagerly would ask my friends to read every single one and tell me what they thought. Writing and I were best friends, and I shared my writing with anyone who I thought might appreciate it.

I mainly wrote about struggles in life; if you can understand a person’s sadness, you can touch the deepest parts of their heart. I could see the moment in a person’s eyes when they truly understood my writing. I wrote hoping others would read it and maybe find comfort and understanding.

I was always a happy kid, I wrote a lot about the idea of deep sadness, but I had never truly experienced the feeling.  At 21 years old, my world changed when my mother died.

Suddenly, my brain became crowded with feelings I had never met before. Feelings I used to write about, strangers I would view from afar, were at my door, shaking my hand. Somehow, they knew my name; and when they got to my door, they had a key.

Greif never visits alone. Soon, the things I used to love moved out to make room for the new occupants in my head. Writing and I became strangers. Years went by, and I began to lose sight of who I was.

Slowly but surely, I began the process of working through my pain and grief. Grief is not the enemy; it is too a victim, forced to roam. But if left mistreated, it will speak, breathe and eat for you. I started to clean my headspace. Began treating myself, and my grief, with empathy and love.

Then, one morning, I reached into a corner of my mind, and writing and I found each other again. My best friend. I began writing everyday as a therapeutic practice. It helped. But I don’t want my writings to be trapped in my notebook. Maybe, you feel a similar feeling as I do. And in reading my writings, we could find a little bit of peace together. I invite you to stick with me, listen to the musings of a stranger, and see what comes from holding hands down a new road, together.