Photo by Rachel Lynette French on Unsplash
I have been wondering how non-writers process their feelings. How do they deal with an unpleasant day? How do they dissect their relationships or get over a fight?
These thoughts dropped themselves into my mind much the same way a tired branch falls to the ground after a vicious wind has beaten it.
I had had a particularly challenging day; I wanted to attempt to make sense of it the best way I knew how. My fingers were itching to feel pen on paper or perhaps I should say feel glass on my fingertips seeing as how I usually type into a writing app on my phone.
I have wondered if I did not have the gift of writing how I would have expressed myself; how differently I would have turned out perhaps.
As it is, writing is the key that opens the door to my psyche. It is through it that I make sense and gain perspective of my life; it is the chair on which I sit to untangle the spaghetti of cords that are my emotions sometimes.
I don’t just write- it is how I cry, how I laugh; it is how I make decisions, analyze a situation; it is the best way I know how to be me.
I don’t know how not to be a writer or how not to write.
It’s like being in a relationship and Allah knows I have broken up with writing many times. Whenever I have felt frustrated that there were no answers coming to me when I needed them most I have thrown away my pen or uninstalled the writing app. When I depended on it to provide solutions to my problems and nothing was forthcoming I walked off in a huff promising I was never going to write down another syllable again.
But it was like cutting off your nose to spite your face- I missed it so much and felt enormous guilt for badmouthing it that I took it up again. No need to know that all I wrote that day were words I can’t print here. The important thing is that I started writing again.
But seriously how do non-writers deal with life’s ups and downs?
How do they handle finding out they are expecting a child, carrying it, then having that child die in utero a few months down the road?
How do they cope with losing a parent, having their child move to another time zone, quitting their job, finding out they are diabetic?
How do they express their joy at reunions with loved ones, great conversations with siblings, weddings of their little nieces who are all grown up now?
How do they explain their delight as they open presents thoughtfully bought for them by loving friends, how do they put into words moving into a new home?
How do they put into words the quiet after fajr, the beauty of sunset, the birth of their child, the sound of the adhaan?
I don’t know how they do it.
I know we all have our ways but I don’t know, if I couldn’t write, what or how- or who- I would be.
We all have our gifts. I am just so honoured and blessed that mine is writing.
