I imagine words; I imagine the way they smell, the way they taste, the way they sound, how they would feel on your skin. Some words, words like gregarious and euphoria, smell like a bouquet of freshly cut roses. Other words, such as pernicious and malevolent, sound similar to the cracking of thunder. There are words that feel like a slap across the face; ones that leave a red mark for everyone else to see and a stinging that seems to take forever to subside. The words that hurt the most are said without any sort of forethought or reservation; these are the words that never leave your mind. They taste uncommonly bitter and sound like nails on a chalkboard. Then there are words that lift you up and make you feel as if you are an unstoppable force in the world. You become greater and more powerful than the strongest ocean current. For a few moments, all of the words that have scarred you with self-doubt and hatred vacate your brain. The one thing on your mind: how it would feel if only you could fly above the rest of the world. To be untouched by its cruelty and free from the chains that hold you back in life.

I don’t know when I decided that writing and words were important to me. I don’t know who I would be if they weren’t. I do know that I write because it is easier to gather my thoughts and put them on paper, so that they are tangible and less likely to be lost. When I express myself verbally, everything I try to say comes out awkward and confusing. I can’t articulate with my mouth and voice as well as I can with my fingers and a pen. I write to get out of my own head, to stop overthinking things and then thinking about them once again. Sometimes, when I am numbingly sad and have dug myself into a deep, dark hole, I lose which way is up. I need writing to pull myself out of that darkness. I need writing to unshackle the chains around my ankles.

When I write, I am searching for who I am right now and discovering who I want to be in the future. I write when I can’t feel anything except happiness and I need a reminder to not get too lost in someone else. When I have lost all touch with reality, I use writing to bring myself back to the present. To keep myself grounded. To communicate. To isolate myself. On the days when the noise of everything around me is too loud and I need silence, writing is my private mental escape. Writing allows me to get in touch with the childhood memories I have securely stored away for rainy days and nostalgic nights.

I write to force open the doors I have mistakenly shut. I write to close doors that I have left open for far too long and to heal wounds I have poorly cared for. On the nights when sleep has decided he and I are no longer friends, I furiously scribble endless apologies to him, begging to feel an ounce of heaviness on my eyelids. I need writing for my mental health, my sanity, for the sake of those around me. It allows me to let out what I keep bottled in. When I feel tangled up in the stress and anxiety that I can’t seem to keep contained, I write to find peace. I write to create worlds I know will never exist in my lifetime. To grant the wishes that I fear will never come true. To grow in ways I never dreamed were possible.

Sometimes I write for all of the right reasons, for the ones that I always thought I would be writing for. Then other times, I write for so many of the wrong reasons, the ones I swore I would never write for. I write for the person who broke me. Every word I put on paper lessens the chokehold he has around my throat and gradually diminishes the pain he has burned onto my body. I write for the people who have fixed me since, the ones who fill my cracked skin with gold and convince me that I am not perpetually sad. Out of everything that keeps me moving forward in life, nothing motivates me quite like writing does.

I do so much writing but what I taste and smell and feel more than any of the words I have written, are the words I don’t write. The ones I think of in the shower that I tell myself to remember but automatically forget once I shut the water off. The ones I don’t think of when I need them the most but hit me like a train while I am lying awake during the quietest hours of the night. I replay over and over the moments when words have failed me: when they wouldn’t come, when I was too afraid of their truth, when they weren’t enough.

Writing is my sanctuary, the place where I am untouchable. I need that creative outlet, a way to make reality feel less like getting a tooth pulled and more like sleeping in on Sundays. A way to remind myself that waking up early is better than never waking up at all and that love doesn’t hurt, the absence of love does. I write to help myself understand the things that I can’t change no matter how hard I try and to stop trusting the people who continually let me down. I write to stop finding faults in myself. I write too often and not enough, but most importantly, I write simply because I love to.