What's Your Poison?
During one of my becoming more and more frequent daydreams about teaching, I asked a popular question which I have been asked multiple times: "Why do you write?" I asked my imaginary class. "The answer," I said, "should be: 'I write because I must'."
Now I have heard that question asked, like I said, multiple times... but only recently have I known the answer given above to be the "correct" answer. Before my writing revolution, I used to bottle things up inside. I used to look at the hand extended from a friend, scoff, and say "You can't help me... you don't know what it's like." And then I'd sit on whatever it was that was bothering me, allowing it to incubate, until it hatched into some emotional explosion where I thrashed out indiscriminately at whomever happened to be closest to me at the time. And then I found writing. Or, rather, writing found me. Writing and I met eyes across a crowded, smoky bar. I turned back to the bar to grab my drink and go over, but when I turned back I found Writing had left. But then I saw that Writing had left her seat to come up to the bar closer to me.
"What's your poison?" Writing asked me.
"Arsenic" I replied. I was very naive.
Writing giggled. "You're funny."
"Thanks," I said.
"I haven't seen you around," Writing said, "are you new around here?"
"Yeah... but I think I'll be around pretty often from now on." And then I was. I wrote when I had to... I wrote when I forced myself to... I wrote skits, poems, anything I could think of... and here I am: in a much better place mentally than when I moved to Chicago. In a way, I feel horribly behind, as if everyone else started this writing race when they were born, and I'm twenty-two years behind them. That's when I realize that life's not a race... or, if it is, it's about the actual trail and not the finish line. Then I realize that I hate those metaphors, and that is the type of bullshit that people who lose their whole life tell you. Winners know it's about winning, not about what the grass looks like as you're running past it.
I'm sidetracked. What was my point? Ah yes. My point is that, even in times when I've felt like no one knows what I'm going through or, better yet, no one could POSSIBLY understand what I'm going through, I now turn to writing. I don't need to show it to anyone, I just need to realize that, when I write, I'm writing to the one person who DOES get it... who ALWAYS understands what I'm going through. Because, at those times, I'm writing to me.