A Prayer for Writing

Photo by Luca Laurence on Unsplash

Why is it necessary to feel like this?

To be fortunate, grateful, yet not happy, nor even content.

When I get home and I sit at my desk,

Of all the different places this can lead,

The only truly positive one is to write.

That seems to be all I have to give when I feel like this.

This must be what You have given me:

The gift of writing as a last resort.

But write what?

I have to get personal, or else there is no point.

The words just sit there: redundant, boring, condescending,

Unless I explain the world weaving my own story into it,

Even in a way that most can’t see:

That the topics I choose are just an excuse to make it about me.

Keep mining my soul for a source of energy to sustain.

Keep revealing things that it would seem safer, wiser to keep hidden.

To enter a spiral of diarised self-absorption.

To come to the same conclusion of a narcissist:

That my life story is worth your time and attention.

But if it wasn’t the right thing to write like this…

Then what would be the point of feeling like this?

The alternative is suffering for the sake of suffering,

So I guess I keep writing in hope of the feeling going away.

August 18, 2019