Why I Write

 

"Spark"

My birth, I'm told, went smoothly. There were no complications and it did not take place under any extraordinary circumstances. On her part, my mother says that it wasn't particularly difficult, even with me being her first. In other words, I came as one would knocking on a neighbor's door.

It could be for this reason that I've since frequently imagined myself in a wide range of dire straights. From the tragedy of one's parents dying and being taken in by one's relatives to a military invasion and ensueing war, even a minor event like breaking a leg--they've all crossed my mind. I wonder how I would handle such circumstances. In my average, ordinary childhood, I liked to believe that I would have gracefully accepted my lot and worked tirelessly to thrive within the challenge, much like my favorite literary heroines do in the face of their trials. 

As an adult, what I see, feel, and experience on a regular basis often confounds my sense of good and bad, right and wrong. What looks simple on the outside is inwardly a complex circuit pulsing with its own deliberate energy. Conversely, what looks or feels complicated can be as simple as a 'yes' or 'no' question. As my life stretches out horizontally, my soul's life continues deeper in its vertical plane. To navigate myself back to myself (as is necessary to exist in both planes at once), I write.

My experiences, both inward and outward, give me structure and provide content. My imagination provides the rest. One day I came across a man in camoflouge with a construction hat standing under an overpass holding a large turtle in one hand and smoking a cigarette in the other. In a story, he could turn out to be any number of characters. He could be the wise man the protagonist seeks to find, yet just as believable, he could end up being the antagonist. In some other turn of events, he could just as easily be an image written into the background of a scene. 

I write to fill in the gaps of daily living. After the thoughtless actions and words of all the people I interact with daily, including those of the ones I love most, and the inevitable despondency that follows, I write. I write out of boredom.

Sometimes I write about the breaking of my heart, which held up the weight of misunderstandings, misgivings, and countless unspoken disappointments for almost a generation, and then broke irreparably. Everything once walled up has yet to be contained. The flood has not ceased its force. What surfaces does so without any particular pattern, a memory here, an unrelated emotion there. I write to plead forgiveness for its destructive momentum that builds as the spring rains arrive to nourish, but which only add to the horror. I write as a prayer. God save those in the wake of this flood. 

Like a friend knocking at a neighbor's door, I arrived in this world. I came to tell you what happened to me today. I came to find out what you experienced as well. I came to turn our ordinary, routine lives into miraculous narratives worthy of re-telling. I came to write.