I have written the guts of my heart as long as I have memory of the ability to write. I write because I have to speak even when I have no voice. I write because I need to be heard, even if it’s in the silence of my own world. I write because it is the safest expression of my soul, of everything I am or hope to be. It is what I do when communication is imperative to the continuation of a relationship.

Because people interrupt. They talk over you, they manipulate your words to work for their benefit in their twisted little minds. They mis-under-hear you. They paint their own meaning in milli-seconds and obliterate your truth with their own means to an end. They take the words from your breaking heart and use them as a weapon against you and themselves at the same time-because they don’t know any better, thereby silencing your voice.

My words paint the picture of my Truth. They are clear and focused like the sun through a magnifying glass. They burn, and reveal, and create chaos and change. They help me, hurt me, break me in two. When I write, the masks are gone, and my scars are visible, and I don’t give a single shit that my heart is exposed. Not when I write.

The gift of painting a world with words is one I never take for granted. It creates a beautiful place for me to abide, to comprehend circumstances, to grow in wisdom. It powers my spine to speak the Truth as I see it without distraction. If you read my words, you have to hear my voice, you have to see (at least a little bit) my heart.

The truest and most soul-felt of all loves has been expressed in my written voice. My most toxic angers, my most hideous injuries, my most debilitating pain has been spoken in the silence of the written word.

The years I spent not writing were a form of self-punishment for being gutless. I paralyzed myself from both pain and joy. I accepted ordinary as real. I quit dreaming and put in my time. I bought into the suck it up, do the deed, joyless non-life way of existence. I did not write, did not allow much thinking, did not do more than go through day by day by day…

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
― Anaïs Nin

I had no words to pen, because I wasn’t even living once, much less trying to taste it the second time. Who would want to taste shit a second time? Who would want to relive a non-event?

“The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.”
― Anaïs Nin

Who would want to read the coma inducing prose of a gutless fool? Who would heed the words of the shadow hiding behind the rock, the mask, the self-imposed stupor? Don’t we all want to feel our hearts race, our eyes tear, our breath catch on the words of a kamikaze heart? Keeping in mind that the true meaning of kamikaze isn’t to kill yourself fruitlessly in the name of honor; the true meaning being “Divine” or “spirit wind”.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou

There are few joys as illuminating as your heart expressed in a painting of words, or the soul grip of another person saying “thank you for speaking what I could not”. What a fucking honor that is. But Truth be Told, I write for the ability to breathe, and smile, and dance in place when I must, and to throw back my head and sing at the top of my lungs. I write to look the world in the eye and say “This. Is. Me”. I write to reach my heart out to that person who is totally devastated and alone to say “Hell No.” I’m right here my friend, bleeding the same tune, mourning the same paralysis, dying the same death of monotony.

My words are written to say “Rise up!”, to tell that twin flame to wake up, speak up, never give up. To be a reminder to dream however you want to, sing whatever song, paint whatever picture, and dance the dance of life.

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”
― Ray Bradbury

Drink up, my friend.