writing in blood → writing's in my blood

For the last little while, I’ve been trying not to write. Damn right I’ve been avoiding. Most of the time, I don’t write for fun or pleasure. It’s an incredibly painful process, and isolating – not in a good way, but in a plunging-into-the-abyss way.

I’ve been trying to deal with my writing process. I’ve fought it until I was physically and emotionally drained. Late nights at 3a.m., willing myself to not switch on my laptop. Trying not to rely on writing as a way of maintaining my sanity. And losing my grip on real as a result.

Because writing is how I deal. It’s the reason why I can chill with my demons. Because when I write about what plagues me, I’m confronting them, conversating, reasoning, pleading, or sometimes smashing them over the head with my sentences.

I’ve been lying about it too. When friends ask me how my writing’s going, I grin and say “great, just spent three hours at the computer”, when in all reality, I spent three hours glaring at my laptop, incapacitated, refusing to write, but unable to do anything else.

It’s been interesting. It’s taught me a lot about what writing means to me, and why I need to write. I even wished I couldn’t, calling it a curse.

I’m still not at the point where I can embrace my skill as a talent, but I’m no longer dealing with it as my cross to bear. Got enough of those.

I’ve been exploring my past, tracing what defines me, trying to figure out why writing should be included in my definition of self. And I’ve discovered that I can’t avoid it, it doesn’t do me any good. It took ______’s words (insert any name from my maternal lineage) to remind me.

It’s in my genes. And I gave up (consciously) fighting those a long time ago. And so I surrender.