Dark times are inevitable in everyone’s existence and I found my therapy for those moments involved spilling my heart out on a sheet of paper. The first time I really wrote for myself was during a rough patch in my life, where the only thing I felt I had control over were my feelings transformed into words on a page. Sometimes when it feels as though you're drowning in sadness, a pen and paper can be metamorphic.
I vividly remember the night I fell in love with writing. I had been trying to fall asleep for awhile and as I was finally drifting away, my mind put together a sentence that related entirely to my emotions,“I stopped eating when you left, I guess so my stomach could match how my heart felt -- empty.” The words just spilled off my tongue and the epitome of what I had been feeling was finally illustrated through 17 words.
I quickly found that writing doesn't have to follow any rules -- besides grammar and punctuation -- and is an entirely personal form of expression. You can write a poem consisting of five words and you can write one consisting of 5,000 words. Writing is about exhibiting your soul through words and creating through experience. It’s an incredible process to take emotions and morph them into a string of words that had ceased to exist before you wrote them.
The first style of writing that I really felt expressed my emotions was poetry. My infatuation with poetry revolved around the ability to create something that was so depressing and dismal into something that was so raw and beautiful. Free verse poetry is the most liberating in my opinion because there are no restraints in meter or structure, allowing pure flow of thought.
Writing enables complete surrender to your emotions. You are literally delving into the most sore parts of your spirit and expressing your pain through words. It’s important to accept and grieve when distressing events occur -- ignoring your emotions is the most burdensome. I find writing is the perfect instrument for dealing with difficult stages in your life because you see the beauty that heartache creates when transformed into words.
I urge you to pick up a pen and start writing your thoughts and emotions. One of the greatest feelings is reading what your own mind created. The experience of trying to find words for the unexplainable emotions traveling within your body is incredibly empowering.
Ernest Hemingway once said, "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."
