A love letter to Writing

(In case anyone’s interested lol)

My best writing (to me at least) is the one that is sparked by anything but the intention to write.

I can’t just schedule a time for it and sit on my computer and produce something I’m proud of.

It’s literally when I feel an emotion so profound I want to capture it before it escapes me.

Sometimes, it happens when I feel most alone. Sometimes it’s when I wake up suddenly miles above a silent sky and look around the plane and everyone is asleep or cooped up, and I’m left alone with my thoughts.
Thoughts that wouldn’t ever have a chance other than this one to materialize.

The thoughts I routinely disengage because I’m too busy to have a mental break right now or have serious commitments coming up and literally cannot afford to feel.

Sometimes it’s when I’m mid-conversation with someone, recapping a series of events, and in some mundane, totally unnecessary detail of the recap, a thought finds a small crack and seizes the opportunity, finding its way through and interrupting me.

I’m usually puzzled by this interruption, and it throws me off, but no one can tell except me.
I go through my day with the thought fogging up my brain, waiting for privacy so it can finally be written out.

The negative thoughts aren’t as avoidable or subtle in the way they take hold of me.
It’s the negative thoughts that must be written out almost immediately, or they might erupt within me.

The thoughts that hold so much rage it’s tangible.
I can taste it on my tongue and feel its gut-wrenching presence inside me, ripping me apart, rotting my insides with every passing second.

Code blue.
The thoughts that come gushing out of me — no amount of compression will stop the bleeding.

If I don’t throw it all up on paper immediately, the words will kill me.
I might die from the intrusion.
How dare I even think I had a standing chance to hold them in, silence them?
Let them stay in my gut and sicken me?

When I write those thoughts, they die, and I feel better.

There are ones whose deaths are losses, and if I lose them, I lose.
The ones whose deaths are more silent, but keeping them alive is so necessary.

It’s when I have nothing to write with, where my entire body itches for a pen and paper.
An allergic reaction — and writing is the cure.

It’s the thoughts that come up scribbled down on a random napkin so haphazardly you’d think someone’s life depended on it.
But it is life or death — for my art, it’s now or never.

For those ones, writing is the lifeline for that painting in my head that needs to be completed.
The one that organizes my feelings in a way that helps me — it makes something not only beautiful but productive out of the mess inside me.
It connects the dots that no one sees but me.

If I don’t write it now, I will never remember it in the same satisfying way I first saw it in my head.
It will never make that much sense again.

And I don’t know who leads who?
Does my writing inform me, or do I inform my writing?

Sometimes when I read my blogs, I’m enlightened by the content as if I’m learning something new.
It’s as if those thoughts didn’t come from within me; contrary, they are coming to me with newness so unfamiliar.

Sometimes even when I reread it instantly, I still can’t recognize myself between the words.
As soon as I stop writing and read it for the first time, I’m surprised by the script — as if I’m the reader only, and I don’t know who the author is.

Is this relatable to other writers?
This puzzling unfamiliarity with your own?

I don’t really know.

My theory is there are so many compartments to us, and writing unlocks ones that are so arbitrary to our daily selves, it’s hard to conjure how they are part of the whole of us.
So when I read what one very distant part of me wrote, I struggle piecing it together as me.

I like it though — it’s a treat.
Content curated especially for me, my liking and preference.
A piece of entertainment that I am guaranteed to relate to.

I find inspiration in the eyes of strangers I notice.
I live in my head; I rarely notice anything in the real world, but when I do, it inspires me.

I find inspiration in museums, art galleries, books, other writers.

I find inspiration in the arguments where I’m an innocent bystander who got harmed in the crossfire.
I find inspiration in the hurt I feel when I am misunderstood by someone who is supposed to understand me.

Do you know how small that makes me feel when someone I’ve known my entire life can’t see me?
The agony of it all translates into my writing.

I find inspiration when I talk to God and profess my love and sins and everything in between.
I find it when I ask for forgiveness.

I find my inspiration when I see the people I love succeed and be truly happy.
It’s the sparkle in their eyes and the depth of their smile lines that feeds love into me so overwhelmingly it has no choice but to flow out into my writing.

I find inspiration when I feel most safe to reveal the parts of me that are the most fragile — the parts I have never let anyone touch, just see from afar, a glimmer.
That’s rare though.

I especially find inspiration when my heart is broken.
The moments where I’m on my knees, crying out on the floor, so helplessly trying to collect the fragments of my heart that were shattered, spat out, crushed by someone I trusted — before I lose it all.
Trying to salvage the remainder of who I am, after the knife was ripped out of my gut with pieces of me still clenched to it, pieces that will probably never come back to me — stolen for good.

A two-way permanent gaping hole you can see right through my flesh.
The permanence gives me unlimited content. A gift that keeps on giving. One experience that births many.

A pain so deep it finds refuge only in my writing — because no one will understand.

But I mostly find inspiration when I don’t look for it.
For me to produce anything, I must be so far away from the need to produce.

As the title of my blog goes, with my writing I’m trying my best to be as bare and transparent as I can be — so it is unedited.

Aside from the grammar and spelling mistakes (which — I am a terrible speller), I leave everything as is.
The construction of it, the flow, the mapping, the unpopularity, the savageness — no matter how bad it seems to me, I leave it unedited.

The fact that my blog is unlinked to me publicly yet — till this day only a very select few have access to this unmasked version of me — allows me to be so free and reckless in my writing.

I’m sure that won’t be achievable if I start thinking of so many people reading, seeing me through the lens of my unfiltered, momentary, raw thoughts.

I hope one day I do get the courage to let anyone and everyone read all parts of me — the parts that remain alive or have long died, even the parts that lived a very short, unfulfilling life but somehow mattered enough to be written out.

For now, thank you for reading.
I appreciate you.