To write means more than putting pretty words on a page.
The act of writing is to sharea part of your soul with the world.
Unknown
I have been extremely busy this past month. I have also been extremely restless. Though I can attribute the “ business” to several factors, I was unable to find the cause of my restlessness. A feeling that came in unannounced when you least expect it and creates havoc to a perfectly enjoyable moment. My restlessness was so that I was unable to enjoy the activity that I most love i.e.: reading . What was making me more restless was the namelessness of it all.
This morning as I was casually chatting with a friend on Google Talk, she suggested to write on a particular incident that happened to me a few weeks back. Suddenly I knew the reason of the feeling that was enveloping my entire being making me cranky, restless and totally out of character. I had not written for over three weeks! My fingers had missed tapping the keyboard and weaving a story, my mind had missed forming sentences and phrases and arranging them in the logical sequence that would ultimately end up conveying a coherent story. I never knew I could miss writing so much.
I was never a writer. Ever since I remember, I was totally, absolutely and madly in love with books ( I still am for that matter) but writing was something I consciously stayed away from. Apart from writing a few poems here and there, like any 17 year old, I have never given a serious thought to it. My cousin often teased me saying “ You love to eat but hate to cook. You adore books but run miles away from writing”. As I saw it, writing was something that either intellectuals did or someone who needed words on paper to express what he/ she can’t articulate. I was neither an intellectual ( I am no Amartya Sen, Taslima Nasreen or Noam Chomsky ) not did I ever fall short of words to express myself.
I think life had other plans for me while I was busy being overconfident about my inability to write. It was August of 2013 and I was extremely angry and very disappointed for not having a weekend off for four consecutive weeks. I had had no rest and more importantly my half read book remained untouched and unread for many days. There are times when there is so much negativity in you that all you want to do is scream. Instead, I tapped away on the keyboard and my first article “ Smell the Roses” emerged. I instantly felt a calming effect on me, as if a huge load has been taken off my chest. However, I took it as a one off incident. Words flow easily when one is consumed with a particular emotion.
I have a lot of anger in me and as a child and a teenager violence, verbal or physical, became the expression of my anger. As I grew up I realized the futility of my actions, the violence stopped but so did the medium of my expression. This resulted in a lot of restlessness in me. In absence of the violence, I was robbed off the only way I knew to express myself. All my feelings were bottled up and I became a walk time bomb of emotions. Emotions that could explode anytime.
A few weeks later, something else happened and I felt extremely upset. Unknowingly I opened my laptop and my fingers went flying. In an hour I had poured my heart out on the electronic paper. Over a period of a few months, my mind would start composing a response whenever I was faced with a situation that would upset me. Something that began as a one off thing has now become my auto-response , my way of communicating with the world sane violence.
It’s not been a year yet but writing has become an integral part of my being. It keeps me sane amidst all the insanity that the world has to offer. My fingers on the keyboard, my mind constantly busy in trying to put my feelings into coherent sentences and my heart finally feeling light. Writing has become a therapeutic process for me, a catharsis that I never felt I could ever feel. Every time I write my soul gets cleansed of all the negative emotions that I had been feeling up till now. Now every time I have something to say the words become my friends and I write away till I am emotionally spent. As Maya Angelou said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” So I sit in front of my laptop and let my heart bleed. After all there is nothing more to writing but a bleeding heart and an intense desire to share
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