For quite a while I’ve forgotten how writing was my main (perhaps only) catharsis for getting a load off my chest, or when I simply needed a go-to outlet as a person who never felt a need to pour my feelings out in entirety to someone else. Throughout my schooling days I’ve kept journals detailing all sorts of ups and downs, rights and wrongs, external events, inner struggles, fulfilling occasions, worthless promises, important highlights, the lowest lows, and stories of people and things whom I wish to keep in my memories and close to heart.
As I grew older, I stopped textually detailing my memories with such fervent frequency – in part perhaps due to a more colorful social life resulting in less me-time, and partly (lately I’ve come to realise) because I have had more memories I wish to lose, rather than to keep, it’s harder to write them down and see them turn into reality.
So I turned into writing crap fiction with protagonists sounding a lot like me (most of which never saw the light of day because I killed them with CTRL-A-DEL). When I stopped needing to write, I also stopped listening to my thoughts, or drowning them out with late nights just so I can breathe and live in the day, not needing to face up to the reality of my own feelings. And I must say it has been harmful in more ways than one. Writing could in fact subconsciously organize the chaos inside one’s head, provide a source of tranquility and peace in those moments of penning them down, and align the head’s thoughts with the heart’s feelings. You know how some will say that your heart and mind disagrees? It’s true, I fully concur.
Many years ago, I’ve had to cut away from a life I knew, and people who were my everything for a couple of years before graduation. I stepped into the working world afresh, thinking I would be fine with never looking back, but I’ve always felt something was amiss and never properly addressed. I lost a part of myself lately, in a different manner this time due to a conflicting decision. I was lucky to be away and alone with my thoughts for a bit. In isolation I could be me, to live out the outcome of this choice. For a while I even felt good suffocating myself in my thoughts. But I knew this could be something that will slowly eat me out from inside.
Then I wrote it down.
There was immense relief turning these into words. It doesn’t feel better when I remember – it could hit as I close my eyes in bed, or find myself in a crowd of unfamiliar faces, or as I’m speaking to a close friend to whom I will never bring this up. But in the very least, my textual log was an emotional release that feels better than telling someone else.
Sometimes it takes a wrong turn to get you to a right place. Sometimes you just get lost and find a need to pick yourself up in a brand new environment and start anew. I just know, everything prepares you for what comes next, if you can move on, and it’s crucial to find your best way of moving ahead.
Writing is mine; I hope everyone finds their most trusted and effective emotional outlet in this crazy world.
And so, I found my mojo back, and it feels so damn good to write again.
P.S. When I die, I wish for my journals to be burnt.
xoxo,
Jean
