I saw this article on one of my favourite blogs, Moleskinerie,this morning and there was a line that struck a cord with me:

For her, I realized, writing is not an optional pastime. It is part of her core and she needs to do it or live an incomplete life and be an incomplete person.For her, I realized, writing is not an optional pastime. It is part of her core and she needs to do it or live an incomplete life and be an incomplete person.For her, I realized, writing is not an optional pastime. It is part of her core and she needs to do it or live an incomplete life and be an incomplete person.

This is an ariticle in the blog www.TheWritersBag.com, and I really identified a lot with the discussion of the NEED to write, or be “incomplete” in my life or person.

This will likely strike a lot of people as odd, especially those who have come across me in my “later” life (the past 8 years) because I have really been painfully ripped away from writing. I have never conspired to be a published writer, I don’t know if I have a story in me, the thought was never to make a career out of doing this, it was to communicate with other people, to share stories that are of importance to us, to let things out, to enjoy language. 

For people who knew me in my early life (school) they would not be at all surprised that I identify writing as one of the processes in life that essentially feeds my soul and allows me to feel as if I am a complete person. I was the kid that sat in class and constantly wrote, I took notes, I created stories and plays and poetry. I kept lists. I was never without a blank book of one kind or another. My favourite time of year was when the school supplies were put out, and I’d lovingly pick out my school notebooks, collect ream after ream of ruled paper for my binders (and always a few extra packs for personal use). I was the kid who excelled in English classes, never complained about writing stories or learning grammar. And it was not a secret that I wrote… and wrote… and wrote…

It was more of a shock to my high school companions that I had given up writing the stories that they had passed around to read during breaks and lunch hours. It was inconceivable for at least 3 of the girls that I had gone through most of my high school career with that I had not been published by my 10 year reunion. One woman was SO convinced that I would end up becoming a published writer that she constantly looked for my name on the covers of books in the Coles and Chapters and on Amazon.com hoping to be one of the first to read my newest story, the way she had been one of the first to read the latest chapter of one of my handwritten “novels” during Algebra or Geo-Trig in grade 10… 

And yet… I no longer seriously write fiction, and haven’t for years and years.  I barely write blog posts, as even that much expression of who I am has become difficult to pull out of myself now.  And I have to wonder… what HAPPENED to me to cause me this much fear and PAIN when I try to write? It doesn’t seem FAIR, because I still very much feel the pull to write, the almost physical NEED to sit down with my MacBook  or my Moleskines and write… even if it is just a silly list of things I need to accomplish during the week, or a grocery list… I NEED to spend the time on MYSELF to sit and write and let things FLOW through me onto the page (whether it is a physical or digital page). 

But I find myself STOPPING myself… telling myself that I am being “selfish” for needing this for myself. And I don’t know. 

Yes, I need to be ever mindful of my responsibilities. I need to go to work. I need to take care of my children and my kittens, because they aren’t able to take care of themselves yet. I’m a single mother, and the weight of that responsibility (approximately 100lbs, physically if you add it up) weighs heavily on my conscience… after all it wasn’t THEIR unhappiness with their lives that lead to the change in our family state. I need to maintain a healthy living environment for EVERYONE in my household – which means that there are days when I need to get myself off the computer, off the couch, and pull myself back to reality in order to wash dishes, wash and put away laundry, sweep, mop, cook, and do all the small mundane things that are part of running a household. 

But I’m aware, particularly with the most spectacular failure that is my marriage (and my leaving my marriage particularly) was caused by my losing who I am, by not meeting my own needs to be a person outside of my husband’s needs for a housekeeper, child minder, and secretary, beyond my children’s need to be cared for and raised, beyond the need to contribute to my home and attempt to reduce the debts. I lost my “voice” in the whole affair. I turned away from what I knew I needed to be myself, what I needed to be spiritually fulfilled. 

And, despite what STBX thinks, it wasn’t a need to be sexually fulfilled that caused me to leave. It wasn’t another man, it was that I was struggling to be true to my self as well as to him. I needed the freedom to write. I needed the freedom to create. I needed a partner who understood that I needed my spirituality to matter, to be given as much importance as that of his father’s, I needed not to live in fear of my FIL discovering who I was because it was a big fat UGLY secret that STBX and I had to keep. I wanted to be able to rejoice in my faith as much as a Christian would. I needed to share who I was with my children, I needed to be able to write them the stories of their lives, without hiding who there mother IS and WAS…

I needed to write without fear of reprisal, without having to hide my opinions, without every aspect of my essential CORE BEING being hidden by obfuscations designed to make sure that I was veiled from everyone, to the end of being hidden from MYSELF. I have to admit to myself that my spirituality is part of who I am, what I am, what makes me feel GOOD to be alive, what feeds my soul. I need to be allowed to EXPRESS that spirituality without fear.

And part of the way I WANT, CRAVE and NEED to express myself is through writing. I can’t hide what I am, I can’t hide my Pagan-y-ness and feel free to express who I am in words… writing in code, in constant fear of being “found out” and “punished”. It feels punitive to hide something so glorious about me… 

I just couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t live in fear of singing chants with my children, of sharing the joy of Pagan holidays with them, of sharing the magick of the changing of the Seasons, the turning of the wheel, for fear of what they’d repeat to their grandfather. I could not write about myself and erase my spirit, for fear that someday, somehow, someone from STBX’s Fundamentalist Christian family would come across something and it would cause a rift. 

It was already causing a huge, gaping, painful rift within my soul that I could not live with. Not being able to write was slowly killing my spirit… 

And now I’m trying to return to that. Without fear… without thinking that I have to hide who and what I am, and where I stand in this world and on my Path…

I have to write… its just IN me waiting to get out…