Millions of worlds of words (a writer’s thank you letter)

‘You’ve got millions of worlds of words inside you’ she said.

‘But what am I to do if I can’t ever get them out?’

It’s true. I am haunted by that question.

The words live in me always. Tumble all over each other inside and out. There are voice memos from freeway epiphanies. Hundreds and hundreds of unfinished word documents in all stages – from one-line fragments to pages and pages of almost-but-not quite-finished prose and poetry. Almost unintelligible scrawls in long ignored journals. Words I have to examine closely to even remember if they are mine.

Are any of them really mine?

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Where do they come from? Where do they go when they leave? Sometimes I haven’t the slightest idea.

The words, they are easy.

It’s the writing that’s hard.

It’s the writing I run from.

It’s the writing that takes me by my roots and shakes me and shows me raw, everything I am and am not made of.

It’s a brilliant and brutal mirror.

It’s been this way for a while.

Who exactly is a writer if she does not write?

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Calling myself a writer is not easy. It takes audacity to even let the words leave my mouth. Harder still to believe and stand tall along side them.

I am a writer.

I am an artist.

I create. I bleed. I breathe. I write.

There, I said it.  I couldn’t say anything but this.

The words, they are my purpose on this earth.

And fuck, if I don’t still tremble every single time.

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But the most difficult of all?

To cut away all that comes between me and the words. The perpetual everything else that must be done. The inadequacies. The demons. The self-doubt. The not-enough and the not-good-enoughs. The excuses. The excuses. The endless excuses.

And to write.

And then to not just write, but to finish. To push through to completion – however that may look or sound or feel. Regardless of whether it is lifesaving or total and complete shit.

To create a post, or a poem or a novel or an opus.

To finish that post or a poem or a novel or opus.

And then to stand. Open hands and open heart.

To say here.

This is it. This is for you.

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It’s the echo of my soul on the page. The blood and sweat of my being on your computer screen. My tears and grief and sex and laughter ringing in your ears.

For you to love. For you to be inspired by. For you to hate. For you to judge. For you to find wanting.

For you to ignore.

For you to know my heart.

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My stories. Brutally true to the hard edge of life or full of fantastical imagination and beautiful impossibilities.

Mine.

Yours.

Ours.

Here. Take them.

I made this just for you.

Yes. You.

There’s nobody else this could be meant for.

You knew that, didn’t you?

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I couldn’t be more naked now.

You have the beating heart of me, there before your eyes. The words that seduced and haunted me winding through your veins now.

They were never meant to belong to me anyway.

Nothing truly belongs to the writer.

The words were always for you.

Thank you for accepting them.

Thank you for holding them like your own. 

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I dance with the muse every time I write.  It’s a dance of heat and grief and melancholy and burn and shatter and rebirth.  It’s the only dance that matters.

And we always dance for you.

Every single time.

Blessed be.