Writing isn’t hard. All of us do it in some way every single day. Having a career as a writer isn’t to difficult either. Being a writer, living your passion and doing it well is one of the toughest things for a human to tackle. Next time you pick up a book, if it was a good read, just know that author literally gave everything and even if it is only for a moment, appreciate the sacrifice.
The price of being a writer-a real one not someone who fancies journaling or likes to tell stories, but someone who can make people experience blood, sweat, and tears through mere words on a page-is a costly one. Being a writer means feeling everything deeply in a different way and on a different level than those around us. How else would writers be able to appeal to the senses if we didn’t feel all of life hyper-intensely first? Being a writer means making people feel something which means we have to feel everything. It can be daunting, digesting a person’s body language, eye color, mannerisms, sins, virtues, tone of voice and word choice all in a single moment. It’s a blessing and a curse. We feel the good, the great, and miraculous but we also feel the mayhem, the madness, and the misery. It costs a lot to posses the skill of being able to write like you mean it. Bukowski, a writer all to familiar with the fire of life describes the way us writers live very well in Bluebird.
I have a bluebird heart inside a rather cold shell. I believe in strength over weakness and have a particular distain towards vulnerability. I grew up in fear and then I conquered it through faith. I am a brutally soft woman. I feel many things, I just don’t find feelings to be useful. In the one hand I value logic, choice, and discipline but in the other is the fact that feelings will never stop screaming to be felt. The best writers feel it all but I’m not so sure the best people do. Feelings tend to be gray and to me, the world and everyone in it makes sense in black and white. Even gray itself is closer to black than its former purity.
There is truth to the quote that writers are a whole bunch of people trying to be one person. Hence the wrenching dilemma of having to continually shut the beak of a bluebird that won’t stop singing. How exactly does a woman like me, a woman much to complex to just be one way all day, exist in a world like this without going to war against herself? True writing is being vulnerable and feelings are the essence of vulnerability. I’d rather be wracked with rage than feel the sting of sorrow. I agree with Beyoncé in the one line; “suicide before you see this tear fall down my eyes.” Perhaps that’s because I’m not strong at all. It could be argued that the truly courageous embrace the breakdown of grief and sadness and heartbreak. However, the logical part of me simply refuses to agree. Flames full of those things would incinerate me and I intend to move forward leaving the fire behind me.
If you are a writer like me, multi-faceted personality, irrationality combined with good sense, strong loyalty injured by intensity. Lover of many yet constantly empty, the dark and twisty picture is easier to see.
Please understand what it means for me to do what I do best, to do it fully, I sit and bleed. I mean that even more graphically than the physical sense of watching my veins leak. I mean it internally. I can feel myself breaking while I’m still breathing because I spend my days experiencing and risking my feelings because I know that’s the only way I’ll get the best out of it. I also know it just might kill me. I also know my heart will ache when the good times lull and I’m old enough to know my heart may even break, again, and I know the Hell all to well of what it is to crawl out of that decrepit place. Dammit I wish this wasn’t the hand I hold but only sometimes do I curse the sky for dropping on me this gift of gold.
I will profit from it. I will remember what I know of love. I will explain the things from decades past that make me smile on the inside. I will unravel the purity of peace that was once my lullaby. I will write the words of every little thing I can barely swallow, deepest regrets scribed shamelessly in order to protect someone else from suffering. There is no pain without a purpose. Just know that when you hurt me I’ll heal. When I let myself feel it’s real. When you leave me it never ceases to cut me deeply. I will write like I mean it even though I know it’ll cost the best of me and at times I’ll have to wrestle my sanity. I will be true. I will be vulnerable even when it’s disgusting. When I love you I may hate you just as severely and for all I am, this dark thundering storm of electric clouds with silver linings, I am so sorry. If I hit you with lighting it’s only because I was too afraid to let it rain.
Mindless Peace 