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Highway at Night

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If you asked me why I write, I would ask you not to ask me that. You already know the answer. But if I must tell you, I am searching. And you already know what for. In a world that moves too fast, that moves too slowly, that never seems to move in a way that makes sense to me, I am searching.

The answer lies by the oceanside, of course. It floats around me in the salty, sea air. It ebbs and flows towards and away from me on the crest of each frothy, cerulean wave. When I’m ready to find the answers, the ocean is where I’ll be. The ocean is where I’ll be, if you’re ever looking to find me.

I write because too often my lips trip and stumble over words that are too inadequate for the tumbling thoughts in my mind. I write because there aren’t many souls in my life who would understand what I meant, and also what I didn’t. I write because sometimes the words build up on my clumsy tongue and I begin to feel as though I may scream. I write to find release.

If you ask me why I write, I would tell you it’s because I love you. I love so many You’s. So many like You. So many who aren’t like You. I want to share with you the things I cannot share with those I hold so close to me. You could say I hold you closer. I write to not feel so alone even though I don’t too much mind being lonely.

I write because the night hours stretch ahead of me like a damned, black highway, leading to something that leaves me feeling unsure, a highway that leads nowhere. I write to fill the silence. I write to quiet the noise. I write to fill the emptiness. I write when I need to be alone.

I write because I am searching. Like so many others like me, I write to find what I am missing. I already know what it is I am looking for. I just don’t know when I’ll find it.

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Make Believe

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Memories of playing dress-up and tea party, just a young thing in a world of wonderment, an imagination without boundaries, escaping reality at every chance. But no, that’s not how life was. I was young once, and I had a vivid imagination, but nothing ever as innocent as princess tea parties and fairy godmothers. I dreamt of being beautiful, of belonging to a family that I resembled instead of the one that I wasn’t born into. A mother with the same tawny shaded skin as me, the same full lips and thick, dark, wavy hair.

I lived inside of fictional worlds, scrawling my soul onto pages as early as I can remember. Spiral notebook after notebook, stacked in neat piles until I reached the age where I needed something more, sturdy, fancy books whose pages I tore with my pens, hiding them on the top of closet shelves and under mattresses, underneath wardrobe dressers, wherever I could find some privacy.

The feeling of exposure when my privately written words were read by eyes they weren’t meant for. My soul being ridiculed and dreams being degraded and destroyed. Yet still I wrote. I never gave it up. Writing is what I do. It’s all I have.

I never dreamt of love, it was always a fairytale, a fable, fiction that was beyond my comprehension. I couldn’t even write a love story if my life depended on it. What is love? A mythical creature, the things nightmares are made of.

As an adult I continued to try to play pretend. I tried to be a wife and mother like those I read of so often in my beloved novels. One that is domestic and caring and dutiful and beautiful and all it got me was pain and pain and more pain. A madness so deep and dark that I prayed for it to end but it never did.

I pretended to be okay, I pretended to be alive. I pretended that I wasn’t pretending. I made myself into who I thought I was supposed to be, so many different sides of me, it was what I imagine being schitzophrenic must be like. While I was trying to find myself, it seems that I lost myself. And after I was done pretending, after I had run out of imaginary plotlines, after I had hit rock bottom, a brick wall, what I thought was the end, only then did I begin to live.

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Truth

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Did I say too much? Did my vulnerability and temporary moment of madness make you uncomfortable? I tried to hold it in, but it had to be let loose or I would’ve begun to slowly crumble like a cliffside weathered away by the ocean waters I love so much. I almost regretted letting you see that side of me, but it is who I am.

I lay in bed for so long, wishing for sleep to overcome me, for me to forget about the chaos that was bubbling inside, slowly taking over every part of me. And eventually, it did. After my tears had dried up and my heart calmed a bit, I was drug into the peaceful depths of sleep where the nightmares didn’t come and for that, I was thankful.

But then this morning I was worried. Maybe I shouldn’t have spoken those words. Maybe I should’ve tried harder to find a way out of that dark place. Sometimes it’s not that easy. Sometimes it feels like drowning. Like drowning while sailing through the air, waiting to hit rock bottom.

I tried to occupy my mind with videos and words and sleep. I tried to will myself to be at peace. And then I worried that I said too much. Did I say too much?

But those words were the most real. They were my truth. They were painful and dark but beautiful in their own way because they were my truth.