Finding me

“I would’ve thought you are a writer.”

I don’t know what it is that the girl in the chocolate store in Belgium saw in me, but it was more than I had ever seen in myself.

She saw my truth, she saw me for who I was.

Writing has been my singular truth long since my mind learned to imprint memories onto it.

And yet it remains the most vulnerable part of me – as though saying aloud, “I am a writer”, would expose the insides of my soul, and steal away the very essence of my words.

A writer’s biggest fear is corruption – of these words. For once they’ve stopped coming from your heart, you’ve compromised the very being of your self.

If you were to ask me – am I a good writer – I wouldn’t know what to say other than – I am as good a writer as my writing makes me feel.

As long as I am writing, I am happy. And so, as long as I am happy, I want to write.

As Hemingway had said, “…Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done—so I do it. And it makes me happy when I do it well.”

For me, the most important thing is that my writing evokes a feeling – in me. If it evokes a feeling in you, my reader, then that is what you have brought to my writing. I can’t take credit for it.

All I want to do through my writing is tell my story, straight from my heart.

Because in telling my story, I am able to find myself. And if the goal is to find myself, I can’t adulterate my story by thinking of what others might think when they read my words.

Writing is a deeply personal activity. We writers willingly expose ourselves, our naked hearts, to our readers as they dissect each word, trying to find our truth, or maybe theirs.

And over years and years of stripping aside any layers that don’t belong to us, we writers bare ourselves to those who care to find us – in the ultimate hope that one day we may find that we have come to know our self.

That’s how I found myself, that’s how I find myself everyday.

Writing gives me my self.

Every. Single. Time.

“I’m a writer, by heart.”

I wrote down a link to my blog and walked away from the girl in the chocolate store in Belgium after she asked me how she could find me.

Find my words, and maybe someday you’ll find me.

Through writing I look for escape, and enlightenment /
For reality, and fantasy /
For grief, and solace /
For catharsis and gratitude /
For losing myself, yet finding me //