The Long Road

I told myself I would become better at writing those thoughts down. I told myself I would start today. I sat in my car while waiting to pick up the Girls and I tried, I really tried. I wrote out a few lines and was immediately repulsed by them, I can’t even say disappointed, it was more a type of disgust. I’m not being too hard on myself, maybe my brain is too full.

I thought of the kind words said to me in my last post and I wondered if I was ever really meant to write. I’ve always told myself that people are instilled with passions for a reason but as usual, I found myself doubting my own.

I thought about my third grade teacher, as silly as that sounds, and how she was the one who sparked my passion for words- all with an assignment for our class to make our own books. We used cardboard for the covers and hot glued our choice of fabric to it. Then we sewed our choice of pages inside. Maybe we did this before we glued our covers on. We must have but that was a long time ago and my memory is already pretty crummy at times.

I was so proud of my efforts at making my very own book but staying true to myself, i had no idea what words I would write on those blank pages. I think this is when my fear of blank pages was born. There were only six, maybe it was eight, but that little cardboard, fabric-covered book terrified me. I couldn’t even tell you what I wrote in it. I doubt I even wrote anything at all.

I always have the greatest desire to create something, to write my own words and see them in front of me, but those damned blank lines- there’s not much else in the world that grips my heart in terror quite as much as those blank lines do.

I’m sure I started writing because the books I loved so much as a child allowed me to travel so far away from the disappointing life I lived. The older I got I wrote because I felt that no one understood me, I had no one to talk to. These days the same is still true, I am alone so often, even if it is not physically alone. It’s not as bad as it used to be, I think those magical pills the doctor prescribed me four months ago have helped, but from time to time those blank lines are all that I have. I stare at them and imagine the possibilities and terrify myself into believing that this is all that they’ll ever be- blank lines.

And even with those thoughts, I don’t give up. Not quite yet anyways. So long as even one person reads my words I can convince myself that they mean something to someone other than me, that even only one other person in the world understands what I’m trying to say, and that’s why I started writing in the first place. That’s why I’ll continue on. Maybe I expected the journey to be an easy one, and even though I have more days than not when I feel like laying down my pen for good, I’ll stay on the path I fell in love with so many years ago.

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