When I was thirteen I was given a small notebook as a present. It was yellow (my favorite color) with a drawing of a red flower on the front. It wasn’t large. It’s size and shape resembled A5. I loved it.
For about a year I wrote in it from time to time. I usually wrote something innocent from my head. Thoughts and feelings and small experiences found their way onto the small pages. Most of it was quite innocent and wasn’t meant to be anything more than just that. Some words entrusted onto a small notebook for the simple sake of the pleasure of writing. Come to think of it many of those small writings where also put there because there wasn’t anyone to talk to.
Guy Ellis playing with his phone
I was living at my granny’s house through my teens and was far from happy. As with any teenager, happyness was something for grownups. But there were more reasons for my unhappyness and though I only understood some of them at the time, and all of them now, I didn’t understand anything about humanity and perhaps less today.
What came to mind today, when I decided to write something tonight, was the question of “why write anything”?
I have no wish to write novels, not the intellect to write grasping thought provoking essays, no skills for poetry and not really any trained skills for beautiful writing. There’s no question that drawing from my life’s experiences I have enough material to make Hemingway himself blush with envy and could probably aim for stars like Steinbeck, in time.
But I have no wish to spend hours, days or weeks typing away anything of the stuff I keep in my head, not for others to read anyway. The world of plenty has far more interesting stuff to provide than anything I might write. Well, I do have some interesting stuff, but dressing it up in the words needed to provoke any interest, much less to be memorized, I’d rather make an interesting Java program or new website.
But to write what’s in my head simply to get rid of it and clear the space for something of more value, that’s worth a Hamlet.
There came a time when I stopped writing in my yellow book, well not completely. I filled it and began writing into another one of similar kind but different color. A year or so passed but eventually I discovered that my family – a particular aunt – had enourmous disrespect for privacy. I found myself being ridiculed by something I had written about, not once but more often.
I realized that what I wrote in the privacy of my shared bedroom was read by an aunt of mine and share with the rest of my family. It all came back to me. I was shocked but I was also young. I had discovered a need for writing which has never left me. Sitting down in the quiet of the night and writing what is in my mind, my soul, gives me pleasure and comfort. Today thirty years down the road I am still horrified of writing – it all comes back to you.
I had learnt to write in code, to mask some of the things I wish to write about. I had learnt to have no faith in myself – not on account of these things – but never fully realizing it. And somehow through the years I learnt to throw myself into a black abyss of nothingness in favour of being there for anyone who might or might not need me. If anyone gave me kindness or praise I was willing to substitute that for love. Slowly through the years I threw myself away until eleven years ago when a crisis, and an act of kindness, showed me the way to begin the journey to discover myself again.
For the last three years I have realized that I must write. But how? About what? And why should I?
I must. I must find a way to write myself away and back.
