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I have always loved to write for as long as I can remember. Writing has been my best friend, a constant unfailing friend even during the darkest hours of my life. I have always been told that I have the soul of a writer, whatever that means. All I know is that the moment I wake up, I can’t think of nothing else to do but write.

Like most writers, I grew up trying to find my voice – the same voice that tells me what to write as I am writing this. When I write, it feels like an out of body experience – it’s like sitting down and talking to another version of myself, while I stay seated listening, and writing down what I hear. It’s like listening to an old friend’s tale and immortalizing each word the best way possible.

My Literature professor, Alona Guevarra would always tell me that I will never be happy sitting down behind a desk doing a nine to five job. I have a note from her to prove it, I’ve kept it all these years. I don’t really know what she meant by that, as I scoff every time I read that note, proving to myself that writing will never be my bread and butter. But maybe, it wasn’t meant to be. She knew something I didn’t. How could I? I was only 17.

I aspired to be a poet at an early age. It was easier I guess,  I was told that I  just have to make the words rhyme. And so I did. I would fire away words in my arsenal to make my poems pleasing to the ears. To me, any written poem that does not rhyme is meaningless. It should rhyme. But then I introduced to Edgar Allan Poe, Walter Savage Landor, and Dylan Thomas. My perfect world of rhymes collapsed and I didn’t know how to write poems anymore.  It was tragic for a ten-year-old.

I started writing about people, about places and about things I found inspiring. High school seemed to be the perfect  source of anything awe inspiring. It was too perfect and was too good to be true. As I look back, I wish somebody had yanked me out of that dream and told me that life is not perfect, that life is not fair, and that there was a shitload of ugly coming my way. Nonetheless, I was so preoccupied in my perfect little bubble, with my perfect friends, perfect life experiences, which when reviewed now, seems too jaded and superficial. Nothing is perfect.

I started questioning my writing fundamentals in college. I could not find my voice. Should I be a poet? Should I write about the perfectly wonderful people and things around me? Or should I start writing about the darkness that is looming on the horizon? I started questioning everything to the point of asking  what do I want to do with my life. It wasn’t a bad question. It wasn’t uncommon either. But it was an unanswered question that did not prepare me for a ton of crazy I was about to unravel.

During those crazy times, I wrote about how I felt mostly – about how my heart was broken, about how I cried for a month because it hurt like hell. I discovered what dishonesty really meant, how it really felt when that realization hits you and rips your gut. I wrote about love – being in love, being out of love, being in between love. Sometimes I wish that could just write as honestly as I can about it, and not from a borrowed voice, but I could not find mine.  

I am not sure if the storm has passed. Lately, I am beginning to find myself standing in familiar ground, and another ball of crazy is about to unravel. I could go out there in cyberspace and write about the half truths of my experiences. Nobody will question me. Or I could go back to that place where I will sit down again with myself and write every word as it was meant to be written.

But will you listen?