I finally let my pen collapse. Stretching my arms back behind my head, I sighed contently as I leaned into the back of the hardwood chair. Just by looking at the spiral notebook sitting on the barren tabletop, filled to the brim with lines of neat scribbles, one would never be able to see the chaos that had once whirled through my head and been flung onto the page.
This used to happen all the time.
Growing up, I remember trips to Barnes and Nobles, begging my dad to buy me a cute new journal to add to the collection of stationary sitting on my bookshelf. I would keep notebooks upon notebooks filled with very important ramblings about the goings on of the playground and the new seating arrangement that left me sitting with priority access to the beanbags in the corner. I remember feeling quite weird as a 5th grader, walking home from school and immediately starting to write as soon as I sat down at the kitchen table, only sparing time to read a chapter of the current Harry Potter book I was reading.
There’s something so magical about physically holding a pen and being able to transform a shapeless idea into a tangible creation. As I wrote, I would see all of the neighborhoods I had never lived in. I would hear all of the laughter and music I hadn’t known. I would feel the warmth of families I didn’t love.
It’s not sympathy or even empathy. I’ll just walk into a room and literally feel what everyone else is feeling. And that’s a pretty exhausting way to live as a fifth grader when you don’t understand why everyone else’s thoughts are becoming your own. That’s why writing was such a comfort to me. I could organize and sort through all those observations, feelings, and questions without worrying about the fact that whenever my mouth opened, gibberish fell out.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become better at handling the way I intensely experience my environment. These past few years have been busier than ever, but it’s funny because when I get super stressed out and my brain is on overdrive, I can’t help but pull out a sheet of paper and let my thoughts flow out of my fingers again. I know how to make small talk now, but I still find myself drawn to reading the glint in someone’s eye or the tension in their grip. I want to connect deeply with them, and I think people misunderstand me a lot when I say I want to figure someone out. I don’t look at a person like they’re some new puzzle to solve. I write because I genuinely want to understand them and how they view the world.
“A writer is a world trapped in a person.” -- Victor Hugo
It’s true. I’ve always thought that writing has been there for me to understand the world around me, but lately I’ve found that it’s been helping me figure myself out more than anything. I write because I want to know. I want to grow. I want to explore. I want to understand. But I’m a work in progress, and I’ve still got more than a couple of drafts left till I find my own story.
