I want to be a writer but I don’t always want to write.
Because sometimes the world feels too heavy.
Because sometimes it’s simply suffocating.
I want to write beautiful things but sometimes I can’t get past the mangled graveyard of unfinished short stories in my mind.
I wrote an outline for an entire children’s book series on a long run once.
The manuscript still lives in my head somewhere between that stupid thing I did in 4th grade and a memory of a really good Venezuelan meal I ate in Alabama.
I want to be a writer but there’s a degree of honesty and acceptance necessary to be effective and
I’m not sure I have it right now.
Even long showers don’t produce anything more than run-on sentences and fogged up mirrors.
I want to be a writer but I’m having trouble trusting my own voice.
There is a certain high I must be chasing.
The feeling you get when flipping one verb makes an entire paragraph pristine.
Or maybe it’s the release – unloading my heart onto the closest piece of paper.
Or maybe it’s because I have stories to tell.
Or maybe it’s because I think I do.
Or maybe it’s because, regardless of the tense in which they are set, they deserve a voice.
Even a shaky one.
I want to be a writer, but words haven’t been coming easy lately.
I know that will change.
I hope that will change.
After all.
It always does.
And while I wait, heeding time as my only foreseeable solution, I’ll add more fragments and ideas into sloppy notebook corners, knowing that looking back on those words – no matter the hurt – will be a gift.
Until then.
Rest.
Heal.
Breathe.
Begin again.
Love always,
Liz
