A hundred years from now students won't pick apart my writing to find the hidden meaning of my usage. Desperate souls won't reach for my words in hope of finding wisdom and solace. I know all this and that is perfectly okay with me. I don't write to be known. I don't write for money. I write for myself.
I can't say why, but there is something so pleasing to me about scrolling a pen over a fresh piece of paper. There are days when the thoughts are bouncing around in my head so fast I can't decipher what I'm feeling. Everything feels like a jumble, and so I write. I sit down and put pen to actual paper and let my mind go. Some days it's short. Other days it's long. It's rarely beautiful and always messy. My mind moves faster than my hand, and I can't keep my writing from veering off in every direction and circling back again to my original thought. The once pristine white page will soon be covered in smeared black ink and my almost comprehensible thoughts.
Writing is an outlet. If I was asked to express myself and handed a paintbrush, I'd be in big trouble. I could hardly draw a 3D box if I was asked to. Oh, but writing is something I have to do. I hear the sentences rolling in my head. The words rearranging themselves until they are just right. In that moment, I have to make them physical. I need to see it on the paper and out of my head. The vast majority of what I write will never be read by anyone, but me. The beauty of it is that its existence is not dependent on anyone reading it. My thoughts and ideas have been made physical. The ink has dried.
In his novel The Book Thief Markus Zusack wrote, "When she came to write her story, she would wonder when the books and the words started to mean not just something, but everything". In the end, my words could mean nothing at all. They could very be lost in time forever, but for one person, even if that person is me, they were everything for even a brief moment. Paragraphs of nothing fill notebooks floating around my room. There is no order or plot, just myself poured out onto the page.
That is why I write.
