A Spark

A friend asked me today if I have been writing lately. I had to say no, I really haven’t and when asked why, had to take a good look at that question.

Why haven’t I been writing? It used to flow from my fingers with ease and not a lot of agony or thought. So what’s happened?

I sit down to write and I feel this presence sitting behind me watching every key stroke. I feel this sense of disapproval looming over me and I feel frozen. I seem to have lost the freedom I felt when the words flowed so easily. I now think about the placement of every word, space, every hard return. Am I spacing things properly, will these words provoke anger or disapproval or worse, will they be ignored…

So there it is… will they be ignored…

When I write, it really is a message from my heart, from deep within me. I don’t know where the words come from but when they do come, know they are truth and not meant for only me. I can’t really explain it any better than that. It’s an intuitive process, not one that I think out ahead of time. I don’t do outlines or make copious notes. Sometimes I write a few words down then they come to me and I know they are meant to be written.

Yet now when I sit down to write, I feel fear. I feel stiff, choked, and muzzled. Am I moving backward in my life? Am I letting something steal my voice again? I fought so hard to get this back and here I am letting it be taken away again… I know this is all personal, ugly stuff and isn’t uplifting or positive but I have to write it.

I just now realized that I have felt that I can’t publicly write anything that doesn’t look on the bright side, that doesn’t get summed up with a sunny disposition, looking for and finding the silver lining. I just now came to the conclusion that this is not real. It is not truth and it is not me. I can’t write freely if I have to worry about what someone thinks about the words. I can’t worry about whether the words be ignored, I just need to write…

Thanks Marjie for the spark, the encouragement and for the reminder of what this really means to me…  <3