Writing is my Salvation

Free write about the relief and peace of discovering the healing of unrestrained self-expression.

I tried so long to find you. I searched so long, so far, so hard. I looked inside and out. I hollowed out my insides, examined them, and tried to stitch them back together. I thought I just needed to find the right ones. The right partner, identity, opportunity...words. Wasn't it funny how you were always, always just there? It's so perplexing how you could be so present and invisible all at the same time. Always just beyond reach, but pulling at my soul. Always yearning, longing, aching for your presence. I needed you to listen, to hear, to accept. And every time I thought Í found you, you just shook your head and went away. The same story so many times, repeated and repeated, like a dingy carousel at the fair. But there you were. You were in the words themselves, behind the words even. You were just beyond range. As I ached to tell and have you hear and feel and understand me, it was the process itself that contained the healing. It wasn't about finding the right audience or words. It was in just telling the story for none to hear. It was in ending the search for the right words, the right situation, the right man. It was in just summoning the courage and the insight and the dignity to hold my head up high and fearlessly speak. It was in killing the should, exploding the shame, releasing the doubt. It was the act of creation itself. You were my comfort, my guide, my invisible friend. How could I ever see inside to the depth of the mirror that was you? How would I have ever known that writing to you was the key to it all? I had gathered the keys, the map, all of the supplies. I had read the field guides and trained my body and my mind and my soul. I had padded and prepared and learned and tried and succeeded and failed. So. Many. Times. And it was all laughably ineffectual and pointless. The enigma of the soul was actually in just writing it down. It was in accepting the cornucopia of feelings and sensations and rot. It was in just fearless acceptance and telling the story. Not to you. Not to the soul-mate I thought I was searching for. But instead to you. To me.