Why I Write

I write because Patrick McDunn, my senile high school English teacher who didn't even know my name told me I could. 'You use the right words,' he said, and I often question whether that's a semi-legitimate
reason for doing anything or if I'm wasting my time magnifying the scope and meaning of my life with words like 'self-discovery' and 'transformation.'

But in ways that is exactly why. It's all an effort to get closer to the truth of myself or to make some precise, profound realization, which has been biding its time beneath a trap door in my mind's labyrinth until it decides to reveal itself to me. When I don't write, I end up vocalizing all the obsessive compulsive thoughts that belong on the page to no audience except myself, ignorant of the fact that strangers observe, eavesdrop, or stare. Writing gives me free therapy sessions, whenever I want them (I don't claim to be insane--that would be an injustice to the truly insane--but I was once advised by a professional to investigate Stockholm Syndrome. Don't ask). Yet I still find myself grasping onto my training wheels with a death grip, terrified at what might happen should I fully devote myself to the craft.

I write to retain some sanity within myself, and perhaps because of this my writing is still very scattered, unfocused. It consists of scribbled notes of potentially pertinent information and lists of words and titles and ideas. Ideas which, at their conception, had every intention to follow through with the promise they captured in the moment, yet were thrown into a box with a litter of similar moments and shoved in the cobweb friendly area of my brain. I want to write in order to make sense of the cyclonic chaos and create something worth reading.