Lola’s POV: A Thing or Two About Writing

A thing or two about writing.

Since I began writing, I came to the conclusion and acceptance, that my life no longer belongs to me. My share of good and bad days have been… well, a literal share (not the kind preceded by an arrow on your Facebook feed). My bad days are no longer mine because I write about them for the public, so if I’m having a terrible day, you get to ride on a couple of words that let you travel down my path, even if just for a couple of paragraphs. This was precisely one of the main reasons I went into writing, because of the ability to share.  Share my day, my thoughts, to open up to anyone who bothers to read and care for a couple of sentences about what you have to say is marvelous to me. I don’t need to find someone who is willing to listen, or hunt down a friend to talk to at 3:00am because everyone who truly wants to be there, will. At their own time, at their own pace, word by word acknowledgement.

Life suddenly became easier when I began writing. I could YELL!, SCREAM, whisper, without raising my voice. I can be writing the most outrageous things behind my screen at a local coffee shop, and the lady sitting across from me will never know. My thought process emptied on a piece of paper, as if some sort of watercolor painting in the making. Truly beautiful. Perfection. Writing became a sort of code between my mind and myself – a group of metaphors and similes, and complex intertextual sentences that only I could understand. Whether it be in my poetry notebook, or an indirect tweet I wrote just to see if anyone out there was thinking the same way I was. My paper isn’t going to judge, nor will my keyboard, notebook, napkin, or paper placemat on top of a restaurant table. It’s all me. It’s never been about anyone else when I write. Although it does sound completely selfish and crude, it’s the harsh truth. I never knew how much I had in me until I began to write.

Writing is my ibuprofen. My gut wrenching teenage angst that’s made me want to scream at my mom and dad, roll my eyes at my brother or shove a classmate, are censored by my pen and paper. I think before I speak. The seconds before a witty response are often the threshold I must cross, and that so often keep my impulsive mouth out of trouble. But in writing, there are no delays. No buffering or time for a thesaurus. Writing saved me from making some big mistakes in my life. Writing is my guidance counselor, my fairy godmother who’s tugged on my arm to tell me, you don’t need that, release what you feel while you’re with me. The escape that someone else found in drugs and alcohol, perhaps sex, I found in dead trees and graphite. It’s become a part of me, that scent of freshly sharpened pencils. Writing has made me cry. Writing has made me feel, what no one could evoke with touch.

Writing has made me, me.