didion observed that the title orwell had chosen for his essay ‘why i write’ sounds simply like I I I, me me me.
i had been trying desperately and failing miserably to find my voice again in blank notebooks of every size and colour, all i could turn up were memories of writing until my hand would cramp up. the image of a bright eyed precocious younger self invariably tainted by feelings of creative jealousy and rage. i still have a callus on the middle finger of my right hand from gripping a pen all those years. writing was all i had for a long time. writing was how i talked to the world, and then suddenly, talking was how i talked to the world - and the symptom of writing unknotted itself within me.
writing and talking at the same time was pointless. i doomwrote myself into oblivion on notions of interpersonal anger and obsessions of lack. i always ended up at the same place, my pen flying off the page; how much i hated writing. how it was a masturbatory and perverse act that i found insulting to the soul…and with the way that i was writing, it was. the pen revealed a sinister and insolent child leering just beneath the surface of my shiny cool exterior, and she was apparently very mad and trying very very hard to be smart. i didn’t like her and i hated having to hear her. notebook on the bar, sipping a martini, remarking in ink how i hoped a future version of myself would think i was funny and then jotting down how cringe that was.
thats what i think i thought writing was, or at the very least it was all i could muster up the heart for. looking back on these entries now, i cannot recognise this cynical and hurt person. i cannot even recognise the handwriting.
i had a big change in my emotional world recently, and im finding bits and pieces of my id and ego and superego packed away in boxes and on top shelves i havent been able to reach before. i find myself experiencing moments of joy and sorrow, alienation and profound belonging. i find myself lustful and repulsed, desirous and rejected, hum drum and yearning. bumping into old friends and shielding my eyes from a hot sun, all in a days work. i’m finding my days so full with opportunities to think with my heart, and from my heart is where i’ve been writing.
i’m writing again.
and the writing is not hard, which makes me want to cry with relief to be able to report to you. i am practising seeing myself in the world, rather than the world inside of me. i like myself, trust myself, and i need no longer be in the watchtower of my heart. i want it all. i love the feelings. i choose the feelings.
“even from just within me, look at all that i can do.” journal entry, 11/06/2023
devoured every entry - in love with the way you write <3