Sunday, May 15, 2016

Of Writing..

A few years back I reached a point where I could not write. There was no lack of substance, no lack of desire for it and yet try as I might no words would come out. Anything I managed to produce was forced, it was literally pushed letter by letter and none of it sounded anything like my voice. My block was so bad that eventually I gave up trying and for two years I lost my favorite hobby and only escape.

The cycle broke when I stumbled across a blog post called "this shade of green". I read through that piece three electrifying times back to back, and the long dead candle flared to life inside me. I went through the whole blog, reading entries as far back as three years old right after reading that first piece. My candle roared into a fire. It screamed its pent up energy into the void that had stolen its breath and it lived, it became. I was inspired by someone whose words I related to and whose writing reminded me of what I was becoming before the block took hold. I was inspired by beautiful language and complex thoughts put into simple and yet intricate sentences sown into place by threads of coherence that pulled you in long before you realized they had a pull.

Two and a half years ago a stranger's words ignited a part of me I had given up on, and I wrote for the first time in years. My words rushed through my fingertips with the pent up energy of years of soulless letters. I wrote and the relief was immediate and intense. I started my blog then. Not under a pseudonym this time, not somewhere to write my thoughts but a place where I would pour my feelings -heart, soul and all into. I wrote until the current flowed freely and it took no force to will metaphysical into solid letters and stitch a small reflection of my inside onto a page. It was both exhilarating and frightening to expose myself, but though the two battled I was always cheering for the exhilaration to win.

My flame dimmed as life attacked, and soon it was just a candle fighting an ocean of darkness. The candle lost, and the void took hold once more. I have been trying to force my letters to carry my soul but they refuse. I have not written, truly written, in more than five months. I am overwhelmed with the need to articulate on a daily basis but the words just won't flow. My writing no longer carries pieces of my soul, I can't paint images that empty the negatives inside me and so they stay where they can fight the positives. I am out of sorts, but the void is too strong and I have no oxygen and no spark of inspiration is strong enough to bring my candle back to life.

I wrote because I had something else to write about but I could not force it out. I wrote this instead. I miss writing. 

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