why do i write?
well, the list is long and in no discernible order. but i’ll start with the fact that writing brings me an inordinate, unnecessary amount of pleasure and joy. pleasure in every common and rarefied sense: it is a gustatory enjoyment, both cerebral and base, and as indecent as any other imaginable sin. words are like ingredients to me, or musical notes played in the scale only allowed in religious fantasies. learning new words feels like a treat i have not earned in any way, but have been given regardless. playing with words is as furtive and frenzied as all the great pleasures of the world. writing is an act of creation that never stops feeling blasphemous; it is every bit as divine as a mutiny.
when i abstain from writing for one reason or another, i feel a type of sickness start to envelop me. i mean sickness in the most understandable way: my body fatigues, my sinuses run, and my mood sours before eventually melting into an insidious numbness. it’s as if the words clog up my lymphatic system, like they stick themselves to my blood cells and turn me weak and heavy. i don’t care for psychosomatic explanations or derision. what’s the difference between nausea caused by food poisoning or writing sickness? that queasy sensation feels exactly the same.
so, i write also because i can’t not write, and i have tried to live without writing on multiple occasions, only to discover sometime later that i had actually been writing all along. just instead of putting words to paper or on a computer, i had been talking aloud in my sleep, or rearranging in my head the words over the radio or in a magazine. the impulse drums hotly under my skin like a second heartbeat; it demands to be appeased, whether i consent to it or not. if i remain stubborn, refusing the pen or keyboard, the madness only becomes more dire and more comical. trees start to whisper sonnets while i attempt to walk through the suburbs in peace; haikus erupt in hives over my stomach and lower back, the traffic lights start to blink Shakespeare in Morse code. i am taunted by language until i come crawling back to the habit i’d been missing severely all along.
i also write because it trains me to see. i don’t mean “seeing” in the usual sense; i mean seeing as in observing, understanding, experiencing, allowing, being. seeing is what you do when you notice an eyelash on a bouquet of roses, for example; it is the process wherein you synthesize the impossible infinite around you and turn it into thoughts or sentences, and it is a muscle which responds unendingly to use. seeing makes me happy because i believe it makes me softer somehow, it returns me to a more elemental state, transforms me into more world than girl.
but seeing is a practice that takes a lifetime to master. maybe some are born good at it, the natural spirits of the world who are somehow familiar with this elusive place. not me. for the most part, i move through life with a field of vision the length of an electron. writing helps me widen the space, it requires that i use all of my senses to engage with the world, to slow myself down and be present, even when my inclination is to rush right through. especially then. thankfully, writing is one way to get better at seeing, and seeing is one way to get better at writing. the two are symbiotic, and effortlessly compounding.
next up on my ‘reasons i write’ list: well, because i am an insufferable egotist, i guess. i mean this without a shred of false humility. i write because, on some fundamental level, i have decided that i must. i have implicitly endorsed myself as an individual with the ‘right to bear poetry’. i have succumbed to my vanity and pride and accepted the consequences of eternal scrutiny and assumption. it is a trade-off that only a phenomenal ego would even consider, and one that i would always take, always, in this life and the next, and the one after that, without hesitation, fully aware of its unique and exquisite agonies—before opening my eyes or learning the contours of my own name—i would pledge myself to that lifetime of earthly magic.
but i would be remiss not to mention that i also write for anxiety. because, at all times, to varying levels of intensity, i am plagued by the nightmarish reminders of my own fallible memory. i am prone to distractibility and forgetfulness; every day, i lose an idea i generated years ago, the name of a childhood friend, etc. this slow disintegration of my inner world is terrifying, and i mourn nightly for the wonders i have lost through the sheer logistics of being alive. it is not reasonable or sensible to remember every moment from every day of a person’s life, but writing almost makes me feel like i’m cheating time. at the very least, writing pacifies me in the sense that i can be sure i have preserved the most precious or pressing thoughts for ambivalent posterity. it is my rebellion against my own erring mind.
of course, i write to fantasise, though this seems least surprising or interesting of all. the matrix of satisfaction that suffuses me when i write is borderline perverse. when i’m writing, the entire world becomes possible, and i am untethered from my pitiable, Kardashev body and existence. the mere suggestion of limitless possibilities thrills me beyond measure or good sense. i’m not even necessarily campaigning for a particular outcome. i am gratified by the knowledge that i could go anywhere, everywhere, all at once. a gluttony of the highest magnitude, i know. but how wonderful it is to hold between three unassuming fingers the essence of exactly everything. it is the same giddy, hedonistic thrill of gods and natural disasters. being a writer is sitting among deities and earthquakes.