Write To Life

I’ve been a writer my whole life. From an early age, I loved to write. I can still recall the first poem I ever wrote when I was in second grade. It was for a school assignment but it ignited a fire in me that nothing can quench. It read:

There was some red
In a bed
I went to see what it said.
This is what it said-
Go home and get some lunch,
Then come back for a bunch.

I don’t think I gave it a title. Forty years later now I don’t think I could come up with an appropriate title now. It rhymes but it is sheer nonsense. Yet from that day I had a love for writing. I’m really not sure if it’s the musical sound of poetry, the act of drawing the letters as I write cursive over the paper or even just the shape picture of each word on the paper, but I get lost in it.

Treasured Memory

One of my treasured memories of my childhood is a trip to Milwaukee with my father on business. I don’t recall the reason why he had offered to buy me something (getting anything extra was rare – we were poor), but he had asked me what I wanted. It wasn’t toys, or clothes, shoes or anything one might expect.  What I longed for were a new notebook and a red pen.  Red ink was special. All the pens in the house were black or blue.

I’ll never forget how I felt as I opened to the first page of that brand new spiral notebook, pristine and pure. There was almost a sensual excitement as I uncapped the red stick pen he bought for me. It was a breathless anticipation filled with the dreams of all the words that pen would draw out for me. I can remember the exact feeling as I violated that virgin paper with the first red word.

There was almost an orgasmic buildup. And then the immediate sadness at the loss of the purity of that notebook. The big moment was over. The regret was short-lived as the words flowed from the pen. I forgot the violation as the joy of writing took over.

Writing Saved My Sanity

Writing saved my sanity throughout my life. As a child, I escaped my unhappiness into a world of words. Sometimes I got lost reading, but mostly I lost myself in my own words, writing out whatever was inside me aching to get out. I wrote out my disappointments when my parents couldn’t afford something I wanted, how I hurt when the girls at school made fun of my thrift shop dresses and mismatched socks, and my joys when they threatened to over swell my heart.

I’ve written out my life, my emotions, my insanity. In this way, I could portray a persona of normalcy to the general public.

I didn’t write for fun or profit. I wrote for life.