The Power Of The Written Word

Some people are talkers. E-mailers. Listeners. Musicians. Anti-socialists. It’s all about how one expresses oneself. I am a writer. It is through writing that I process everything that occurs in my life. Each event that brings me to anger, every feeling that gives me goose bumps. I am a mess without my words. My words calm me down. My words are what I wake up to each morning. I believe in the power of the written word.

I learned to write when everyone else did but it wasn’t until high school that I began writing for enjoyment. My older sister, Ashley, encouraged me to write to escape the chaos that surrounded by parents’ divorce. There were so many things I didn’t understand. A confusion deep inside wouldn’t allow me to isolate myself from the problems my family faced. I began writing to confront those feelings, the fears that nothing in my life would ever go back to normal.

In my writing, I get to be the voice of reason. I get to be selfish without affecting anyone else. I can indulge in the things I’m passionate about and obliterate the things that make me mad. That’s hardly ever the way it goes though. Through writing, I gain a level head. If I sit down angry at the world, I can write out those frustrations, read through them—I almost always find something else there. Perhaps it’s the realization that life is not fair, that nothing will ever make complete sense. Maybe it’s that, for once, I actually I am right and it cannot be denied. In my writing, I get to blow these moments out of proportion. In the same regard, I’m allowed to mourn, to whine about the failures, the struggles. Writing brings a sense of fairness to my life that the real world deprives me of.

For my nonfiction class, I have been researching the physical and mental state of my grandfather. After having experienced three strokes, the magic man of my youth has disintegrated into an unstable recluse—his ability to communicate all but hanging by a thread, like a sliver of saliva dangling from his chin. Though this experience, I’ve been able to crawl inside his world and recognize the day to day suffering he faces, rather than respond to his absentmindedness with frustration. My words bring on compassion, understanding. Writing him onto paper has helped to push flaws aside and bring to light the wonderful person he is still capable of being. My words teach me, challenge me to question the things I don’t understand.

I celebrate their existence. I yell about them, whisper too quietly, spit when I toast the changes they have wrought. Words are all-powerful. You may erase them but they cannot be erased because words define who you are. Words are thoughts. Words are secrets silenced forever. Words are that ever-present voice: spray-painted onto sky-scrapers, whispered in passing, scribbled in love notes on the back of crumpled napkins.