Reflections

Unpacking Baggage

• By Abel
• March 28, 2015
• No Comments

I feel so much better after I’ve written – whether it’s a journal entry, a perfected poem, or a short piece yet to be edited- writing gets the stuff I’ve been thinking about consciously or subconsciously out of my head and makes space for me to think more clearly and just to have a clearer, brighter energy.

When I feel the urge to write it’s almost like the biological urge to defecate. I know this sounds disgusting, but I have to get it out and if I don’t put pen to paper I just don’t feel right. The paper is my therapist to whom I pour out my emotions, frustrations, hopes, and dreams and my pen is my voice. I have friends who say they enjoy writing and that they want to write, but for one reason or another they don’t. And I can’t figure it out. I’m not sure if they are not ready to come to terms with something in their past that writing might trigger or if they have hopes of becoming famous writers but have the doubts that most of us have and so don’t write because in not writing they can’t fail.

I would love to make a career out of writing, but if this never comes to pass I’ll be okay with it because for me writing is not merely a means to an end, it is an end in itself. I’ve done the hard work of looking at myself in the mirror of my writing and at times I didn’t like who I saw. But this self-reflection was a necessary evil which allowed me to acknowledge the self-destructive, selfish, and ugly behaviors I’d exhibited in the past (and sometimes still do) and helps me to forgive myself and move on. I’ve carried around emotional baggage for far too long; now, through my daily writing practice I no longer have to.

Photo Credit: Josh James