Writing preserves my sanity

It’s the inevitable question for writers that comes up in a myriad of situations. Why do you write? My answer is always the same, I write because it keeps me sane. Sometimes I’ll spice it up a bit, like saying it quiets the voices in my head, but same sentiment. As often happens because I lack the ability to sound sincere, it’s interpreted as a joke. While I may be looking for a laugh, because humor is my armor, it’s still 100% true. And sure there are other reasons, but nothing that feels quite as right.  

How it started

My love of writing began early. As the story often goes I was an avid reader, but learning to write myself was more like an obsession. I filled notebook pages with my name when it was the only thing I knew how to write. Writing out vocabulary words five times was my favorite assignment. I was exhilarated when I moved up to full sentences. 

I had a diary in elementary school, but didn’t use it very much until years later. Part of me saw my life as boring and not worth writing about, another was worried about my private thoughts being read. Instead I filled notebooks with the daydreams and fantasies that used to fuel my games of pretend. I tried to write stories as far from my life as possible, although the characters were likely based on myself or who I wanted to be. The poetry started sometime around middle school. It allowed me to skip the details and just pour my heart onto the page. 

When I started high school, I finally started using that old diary again. Mostly it’s details about my day at school, boys I liked and every now and then a random insight. I guess about halfway through my freshman year, I decided the diary was immature and switched to a plain notebook. I filled that notebook and most of a second one by the time I graduated high school. In addition to chronicling my teenage adventures, I continued writing stories and poetry. 

The lost years

Reading the words of my younger self is weird. I often don’t recognize that girl and have no memory of the things that were so important to her. She wrote about boys she liked and if they flirted with her, fights with friends, nights spent drinking 40s in the park, and complained about her family, school, work and other random teenage drama. At first it might seem a bit superficial, trivial details about her daily life. But she wasn’t just recording random details, she was processing. Those days were pretty crazy, there was love, heartbreak, anger, all the big emotions that she only knew how to deal with by writing it all down. All through high school, going away to college and dropping out she wrote it all out. Until she stopped.  

My high school days were turbulent but I managed, just barely. I kind of spiraled after, really falling off the deep end after dropping out of college. I wrote less and less, partied more and more, until one day I just stopped. I left school feeling like a failure, was in debt and had trouble keeping a job for a while. Then I fell in love and it evolved into a shitty relationship. Sometimes I think I didn’t write about any of it because I didn’t want evidence. Without a written record I could fool myself into thinking I was okay. But on the other hand, I may have been too overwhelmed to even try sorting it out on the page. So the question I still ask is did I stop writing because I wasn’t okay or was not okay because I stopped writing? Hmm chicken or the egg. Either way, I feel like I lost years wallowing in darkness and despair.

I can’t point to a specific moment where it clicked and I started writing again. It was a very slow process of finding my way back to the page and a better frame of mind. Writing led me to imagine a different, better life for myself. It led me back to college, out of my shitty relationship and to less insanity. Now I know I have to keep writing. Whether it’s published for profit or shared freely or kept private. As long I keep writing I know I’ll be okay.