I put pen to paper and I wait. I wait for the first word to bring forth a slew of words to create one sentence. One sentence may turn into a paragraph, possibly two.

Nothing. I still wait. Where is my muse? Off dancing in the twinkling of the starlight, perhaps; leaving me here, waiting for that one word to get me started?

My pen, still poised in my hand, waiting impatiently to scribble just one word. One word to create a masterpiece. Still nothing.

Where could she be, the other part of me? She takes off at the most inopportune times. Such a fickle little muse she is.

I close my eyes and lay my head back against the soft cushion of my chair and wonder. I wonder what it would be like to be my missing muse. Coming and going as she pleases, without a worry to bother her, living in her own little world.

“Muse, my muse, wherefore art thou?”

My muse, my inspiration, has left me; maybe for someone else who needed her more.

A vision comes to me, maybe a dream, but it’s so vivid. A child dances in a field of daisies with butterflies flitting all around her. Her bouncy red hair shining brightly as the sun smiles down upon her laughing, freckled face. Her laughter brings a smile to my face and a tear to my eye. This vision, this dream, is a memory. My memory, from a time very long ago.

I let the memory play out, for I don’t remember much of my early childhood. I had repressed them for so long, that some of them only came back to me recently. Memories repressed so that I wouldn’t remember so that I wouldn’t relive certain parts that could damage me all over again. But this memory, this memory was mine and that couldn’t be taken away from me.

Just then, my eyes opened and a realization came to me. My dearest muse never left. She was letting me fly solo for a bit, but she never left.

How could I have ever doubted her? She’s been with me since my earliest memories when I told stories. Stories that covered up wrongs done to a little girl. Wrongs that no small child should have to hide from anyone, especially from her parents.

My muse taught me how to tell these stories and to repress theses hurtful memories so that I wouldn’t have to live with them every day. They just became stories.

She was with me when I fell in love for the first time. I was fifteen and lost in a sea of unrequited love and heartbreak, but she saw me through. She taught me to write down my feelings in ways that really painted the picture of my soul.

My muse has taken her trips of fancy to fly amongst the stars and dance in the moonlight, but she has always come back when I desperately needed her.

She was there through my emotional and physical scarring of my first marriage. She became my therapist. She would talk to me through the words that that flowed through the ink onto my paper.

She was there when my second partner of almost twelve years battled cancer. Fighting for his life as the poisonous chemo pumped through his veins trying to kill the foreign mass that was taking over his body. She was there that Sunday morning he lost his fight.

She stayed with me for a little while, as therapy, but then we both took a vacation – from each other.

One day, I picked up a pen, and there she was –smiling and ready to create! I had found happiness, finally. I still use my muse as therapy, when old memories come knocking, but I prefer to ask her to help create happiness in my writing.

I am in a happy place, with a wonderful family and an understanding and loving soul mate.

So, as I write my stories of self-awareness and my poetry of awareness in general, it is no longer as a depressed poet using her muse as a therapist. It is as a writer to bring awareness to others that we all have a muse; someone, something, our own inner self, that inspires us to create. To create through writing, art, speaking, volunteering–living.

Don’t ignore the inner voices that are there to guide you, to help you, to motivate you. Find your muse. You may never know what can happen until you try.

Well, look at that! Ink flowed from my pen onto paper, spilling my soul into words that were not there before.

Hello my muse, welcome back. Please make yourself at home and stay awhile.