Thoughts for Friday – 11th July 2014

 

Now that things seem to be a little more stable in my life, I’ve been considering what it was that made me first want to sit down and write. Well, I know the reason – it was because I was tired of reading stories that didn’t end the way I wanted them to!

Instead of sitting there with my arms crossed and a displeased look on my face, I decided to get off my ass and perhaps see if this writing lark was as hard as everyone made it out to be. I found out pretty quickly that writing is both lonely and hard work yet there was something about it that pulled me in.

Without even realising it, I’d begun to use writing as a form of therapy, a way to try to make sense of the world around me, a world that often left me confused and disorientated. I started writing for one singular reason but before I realised it, I continued to do so for a number of others that I’d never really given all that much consideration to.

While I certainly do not think that any of my writing constitutes being called a ‘work of art’, I do think that, once the words have been born and sent out into the world, they become immortal and will forever exist out there in the mind or eyes of at least someone. That post or story that I wrote, it has made a mark somewhere in the world and perhaps is so tiny that it is almost impossible to see, but it is a mark nonetheless.

My writing is proof that I existed, that the gamut of emotions that I experienced were real and the lives of the people I touched with my presence will be remembered even when I am no longer here. I’ve been happy, sad, in love, afraid, hopeful and a whole lot more beside.

Yet I am beginning to see that I am capable of more than just existing. For so long in my life this is all I have felt capable of doing – to merely exist for the sake of others. I cannot tell you how depressing and soul-destroying an existence that is and I would be lying if I said that I hadn’t wondered at least a few dozen times as to what the point of it all was.

I’ve managed to free myself from a damaging situation and am now beginning to see that there is a world out there not just to exist in but to actually enjoy. I am by no means a finished product and I still have much to do in order to heal the wounds of the past. I can do that not by existing, but by living the life that I’ve been given and in the way that I want to live it.

The end result may be that I make a tiny and insignificant mark on the world and that’s okay by me, the point was that I had an idea and a purpose and that I actually did something with it and I can’t ask for more than that.