Growing up I was never able to put my feelings into
words. Good feelings, bad feelings, being afraid, being sad or lonely, I could
never express it to anyone. It left me with the eerie feeling of watching my
life from the outside, where I couldn't do anything to change what happens to
me.
After a while I started to write. At about the same time as other
teenage girls started trying to keep diaries with doodle filled margins,
brimming with 'secrets' and initials in marker hearts. The only difference is
that I didn't stop when the other teenage girls abandoned writing, 'Mrs
Timberlake', for real boyfriends. I guess writing gave me something different.
For someone who was never able to speak, writing came like a safe haven.
I would fill pages, my waves breaking on the shore. Putting pen to paper
allowed me to empty the thoughts spinning maddeningly around my head between
neat lines, where they were somehow more understandable, less overwhelming.
Pages slurred with the anger of being different. Pages stained with the
loneliness of being ignored. Pages scarred with the pain of struggling against my
own mind.
I grew up of course, but so did my writing. Nothing changed, everything
changed. I learned to channel myself into writing better. I learned to cry in
words.
It was finding myself and losing myself in the same breath. It is the
sweetest escape and a gilded cage. It still remains the moon in my sky, a
glowing orb lighting the inky blackness of my confusion.
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