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?
