Sometimes the desire is there but the content is lost. Today is one of those days where I feel inspired to write but cannot seem to find the topic to lay imaginary pen too.
Sometimes I feel a desire and need to express the inner darkness that lingers within my mind. To portray the horrors, twists, turns, and disasters within worlds that my mind creates. But a fear as well lingers and keeps me from being able to bring pen to paper.
This is the core element to which holds me back from bringing life to worlds in which I imagine and create. Judgment is a harsh mistress and no matter how often one tells themselves they will not be ruled by it, we all are.
There is no escaping the insecurities and fears to which we face each day. While we ease the pain ever so slightly, we learn to move past them, we find ways to express ourselves and try to break out of old habits. I feel that they are still ever present, an old wound that will never fully heal.
We learn to place bandages, we learn to tend to it over time. We even may reach a point to which we no longer have to apply pressure and care. But a scar is left there, a reminder, deep in our own minds that the possibility. The reality of it is still there, and that old wound could easily open up all over again because it already existed once.
That is what I face as I look at the darkness I hold inside. As the monsters twist and claw upon one another, the fear of rejection. The fear of criticism, the fear that I myself will be seen only for the monsters that come out, and not for the light in which I live my life.
Perhaps that is why when I write I seek out the darkness, write the part of a victim in the story, portray the constant struggle to which they live. In some manner of reflection it is there, my own struggle with the monsters. The desire for them to win in the story, for the villain to have their moment, perhaps it's my own inner desire for my own monsters to break free and find their play among the paper.
There are so many worlds and stories that circle within my mind, that all want to find their place in the world. To be shared, loved, hated, cherished, mourned and feared by others as I have when I look into them myself.
But fear of judgement, stays my pen. Fear of judgement for how dark the villains may be within the story, holds me back. My own fear of what I am capable of imagining causes pause and discomfort.
We all have our own darkness, and yet most of us turn a blind eye. We avoid it like a plague because we are to afraid of what we could be capable of. Writing it, putting it out there, allowing the world to see, no longer can the skeletons hide in the closet. No longer can a blind eye be turned to what has always been there.
With the monsters behind the door demanding to be seen so that worlds may be born, struggling to find the key and allow it all to simply 'BE' is hard.
Then there is the fear of failure that comes with any story written with the hopes of touching another. Fear of being rejected, turned away, when confidence is such an issue it's hard to feel the desire to try. To put yourself out there when all you expect is another comment or criticism that is only there to hurt you instead of help you grow.
I have spent my life constantly trying to figure out the world and what it all means. I have spent my days trying desperately how to learn to behave 'properly', how to think 'properly', now to be 'proper'. Only recently have I stopped and thought instead how to be 'me'.
How to follow my dreams. How to do the things I want to do. How to express the way that I feel. How to share the way that I think. How to tell the world that I am ME.
I went through a phase in my teen years where I stopped caring what anyone thought, or so I told myself. But like that wound it was still there, I simply had applied the tourniquet to stop the bleeding as I struggled to find the ways to cope and deal. Even then I was trying to fit a square into a circle.
I was able to gain confidence in myself in some areas only to have it torn down once again. Years again I spent trying desperately to fill everyone's needs, be what everyone else wanted to see, I never once stopped to think of what it meant to be me. I was to busy letting the world tell me who I was is wrong, who I was didn't fit, who I was is not OK. I turned my back on who I was without even taking a thought to who it was I was turning my back on. Without even questioning why. Without even seeing what was there to begin with.
As I married and had a son, I was given the slightest chance at acceptance and no stipulations or requirements. Mistakes that were made were acknowledged but not lorded over me. I was given room to grow and move forward, to be reminded time and again that judgments from others shouldn't matter. That I was loved no matter what because there is a beautiful person somewhere inside me and they were able to see it even if I could not. I was worth having around, I was worth keeping close and taken care of.
The wound has managed to heal ever so slightly over the years, and the scar tissue solidify a bit more firm. It took a man outside the norm, to help me heal the damage created by the socially acceptable. To feel loved and accepted, to feel it's ok to be who I am.
It took having a beautiful son who finds joy and happiness in everything to know something wonderful could come from me.
It took a diagnosis of ASD for my son for me to find answers and validation in myself and how I am as well.
It took a journey into self study for me to realize that I am different to my core element and not simply by choice.
It took having the amazing husband I do in my life accepting that I am able to love those I call friend, to know love knows no bounds.
It took making that friend to open up the real potential to my own writing and rekindle the love I had given up as a child in my writing.
It took reflection to the things I used and needed as a teen to get by, and relearning self care that works for ME, not everyone else.
It took a therapist for me to admit I have the strength to do this and give myself a bit more credit then I ever do.
And that scar is still so delicate, soft and easily opened is the skin for it will never be as strong as it once was. But it is no longer a bleeding open wound that I wasn't even fully aware of. It's no longer seeping into everything and completely holding me back from taking the chance.
I have been given opportunity, a moment in my life of some small level of clarity. As terrifying as my life is right now with so many changes. So many revelations, So many possibilities for things to go horribly wrong in my life. I have been given the ability to really stop and realize that I need to figure out ME.
I have been given the eye opening moment to realize that I can be me, I can be who I am, I can let those monsters out upon the paper and bring life to so many beautiful and terrifying worlds that exist and it will all still be ok. I will still have the ones that I love, I will still have the life that I live. I will still be loved.
Even with such knowledge though it's difficult to set the world in motion and bring pen to paper. Because insecurities still exist and I feel that is something that will never leave me. Like the scar it will always be a reminder there hovering on the wind with it's breathless whispers.
I've gained awareness, now it's a matter of building the strength and trying to follow the dream I've had since I was a child. I have always wanted to share the worlds I've created, I have always wanted to be an author. I've come to terms that I may not hold a large audience, if even an audience.
That's OK. Because this is about me. Who I am. Instead of scrambling around constantly to find the thing that everyone else thinks I should be, or what I think they think I should be. Instead of trying to find what is considered 'productive' in the world, I need to embrace the fact that this is me.
I am a Writer. I may not write well, I may never sell anything that I create. I have had a few small things published as a child and that may be the only time ever that I do. It doesn't matter. I am a Writer. I am a Creator. I am Me.