Still I write
For when the words won't come
On some days, the words overflow. Rushing, tumbling, falling over each other in their haste to get out. On those days, I fill pages and pages of paper, stacking sentences with the fervency of one who must build a shelter before the storm comes.
On those days, my fingers type feverishly, moving in a delirious dance across the keyboard, and I am dimly aware of how loud the sound must seem to my sister, who works in the same room as I do—painting, drawing, making art that requires silence and classical music—not the clickety-clackety sounds of a mechanical keyboard.
On some days, I write with careless abandon. On those days, my pen bleeds, my thoughts running faster than I can write them, resulting in writing that I struggle to read later. On those days, strangely enough, despite the frenzy of ideas and onslaught of words, my. mind remains calm. Sharp. Focused. Almost meditative instead of how it feels as I scramble to get my words into tangible matter before they slip away into the Abyss of Forgotten Thoughts and Ideas.
Those are the good days.
But there are Other Days.
On those Other Days, I feel incredibly dull and stupid and boring. On those Other Days, the words do not come, no matter what medium I try to use to coax them from my mind. On those Other Days, my words fall flat, and no amount of racking my brain or pacing the floor or staring at the ceiling or glaring at the page in front of me does anything to fill that blank space in front of me. The words. Just. Won’t. Come.
They linger in the shadows. There, but barely. Faintly visible, but only just. Ghostly ideas that play tricks on your mind. No matter how close I try to get to them, they dance away like will o’ the wisps and manage to stay out of reach.
On those Other Days, the frustration is biting, painful, sometimes condemning. How can two days so close to each other be so different? How can inspiration come on Monday but decide to leave me alone on Tuesday and Wednesday?
It doesn’t help that my Notion boards, reminders, notes apps, and physical notebooks have little notes and ideas for essays and stories and the thousands of things I want to write about, but under the bullet points, the silence is deafening, the documents are blank.
There are stories of the old houses where my grandparents used to live. There are stories of my parents and our aunts and uncles as they grew up. There are my own childhood experiences, those memories that I am only beginning to recall now. There is the foolishness of teenage years and the life lessons of college years and the cautionary tales of working and the ups and downs of adult friendships and everything else I want to tell the world. There is a travel memoir or two or five, but the words sit stubbornly in the shadows and refuse to come to the light.
Sometimes, I make excuses. I blame the heat, this inferno of summer months, when in reality—and deep down, I know it—writing the essay that I open every morning only to go nowhere requires something I’m not yet ready to give. A vulnerability of sorts. Acknowledging that a friendship may have been over long before we drifted apart. Finally grieving my lola by writing about her legacy of long days in the kitchen, preparing meals for the family.
The truth is, writing is terrifying—writing in your own voice even more so, because it’s like stripping off the protective armor you hold so close, baring your heart to the world. And as humans, as beings with souls, we naturally distance ourselves from things that are uncertain. Things that shed light in places we try to keep dark. Things that could cause even the tiniest amount of pain or make us keep questioning ourselves.
I find myself delaying it. Fighting against it. Fidgeting in my chair. Arguing with myself. There is a wrestling match between how I want to be seen versus who I really am. More peeling back of layers (goodness, just how many are there?), more plodding along, more ugly drafts before I get to the good ones. More trying to deal with myself, more learning to embrace the vulnerabilities that come with unearthing the innermost parts of my very being, more reckoning, more insisting.
It’s like a battle, but hopefully one I’m winning. But the longer I put off writing about the truth, about what is there in my heart, what matters, what needs to be said, what makes my soul sing—the more miserable I become.
Because when I finally give up and sit down with my truest, most raw self, I realize that all the excuses are nothing. And when I finally let go, then, only then, do the words come. Only then, can I write.