Words

I don’t think I really understood just how much I could carry, until I had no choice. I was 11 years old when it began, but it wasn’t until my late teens that things began to make sense. As a young girl I was faced with medical issues that in all likelihood should have ended my life. I couldn’t even swallow water, and I was a class A medical mystery. I had the doctors running in circles for months before we even began resolving the issue and uncovering my body’s hidden truths.

By my sixteenth birthday I had been diagnosed with an unknown esophageal stricture, cause still unknown, as well as crohn’s disease. The two combined made me invisibly ill and immunocompromised. Life growing up was unlike most kids, I didn’t do the normal things kids do. In fact I became quintessentially a nurse, having an in depth understanding of healthcare and my own health, sometimes better than my doctors did.

Today I am 22 years old, I’m happy, not healthy, but happy makes up for the rest.

When I was in my late teens I lost a friend to suicide, and it broke me. My faith was shaken. Everything stopped making sense, and as a response I began to harm myself. My health has only ever gotten worse, I have been surrounded by traumatic events longer than I can remember. But these horrible, forsaken events led me to a keyboard. Truth is I can’t carry all of my baggage, so I use words to offload them into something productive and complex.

This is me, this is where I shine. Through words. Through Vocal, journaling, poetry… I found myself through words. Literature went from something I did for school and became my heart and soul.

I have been writing and public speaking since I was only fourteen. But it wasn’t until recently I realized the gravity of my words. I sat down to write about my last year, for my birthday to recollect on my 21st year. This is something I do every year before my birthday. The piece that erupted from that experience were beyond any I have ever written. Stocked full of powerful and profound thoughts. Overloaded with honesty and overall rawness I can’t even comprehend.

Recently I’ve been really focusing on my well being and loving myself. Understanding the power of self love hasn’t come easy, in fact I still very much so have no idea how to define it. What I do know is that words are powerful. Words can be understood in any language. Words can send chills down your spine, spark inspiration and even save lives. Words can express you as a person, your style, morals, values, strengths and even weaknesses. Words can both teach and be learned from.

I allow who I am to shine through words, like the blood running through my veins right now. Words never fail me. Words never fail to fill in the blanks, or help me answer questions. Words wrote a book that saved my life. Words I have written have been there to catch me when nobody else was.

I was able to free myself of my burdens with words. I allowed all the baggage and burden to flow from inside me through my fingertips and onto paper. I allowed myself to let go by writing. I got to say things I couldn’t bring myself to say out loud.

I wrote letters to my ex abuser, wrote letters to God, Wrote letters to my health as if it were a person. I’ve written love letters and beautiful stories. I have allowed my words to call out the public, and my government on issues that should never remain swept under the rug. I write to share my journey, and to hopefully inspire others to keep fighting. My words are more than words, rather a direct link to my soul. Words are my relationship with my faith, and the connection to reality that we all crave.

You’ll often find me watching netflix, or grabbing boba with my boyfriend. I’m an outgoing and visibly healthy person, someone who loves talking to others. I love blankets and warm drinks on cold winter nights. More than anything though I’m a writer. I manipulate my words to express my true self. I develop stories that I sometimes base off my dreams, and I create poetry whenever possible.

I let my most vulnerable side out through a keyboard. Because my words will live forever. Because my words are who I am.

Fascinating really how writing became my outlet, and a way to help others. How my words have been tattooed on skin, or how they have alleviated someone’s loneliness.

They say a word dies once it has been said, but I believe the opposite. I believe it’s life has just begun.

I am a girl who has found profound freedom and peace from her words.

Time and time again, I sit down to write, and even with no goal of what to write I allow my thoughts and rants to drain through my hands unto this keyboard, where they will be set free and where you can find me. My words are a labyrinth that leads to my whole being inside and out.

Being a writer is my life line. Manipulating words is my passion. Helping others with my words is extraordinarily beautiful. No matter how hard things get I know that my words will construct a bridge to cross and that they will carry me safely to the other side. I know my words won’t leave any particle of me behind. My craziest dreams become real on paper. I get to let my imagination run rampant and create wild stories. I simple wouldn’t be me if not for writing.

Gemma Troy once said

‘Remember your words can plant gardens

Or burn down a whole forrest.’

Like I said this class A mystery girl, who appears totally fine is actually picking up the pieces one by one rebuilding from the ground up. I’m filling cracks with poems, and laying words down as the foundation. Words are abstract, just like me. Words are freedom, and the only reason I’m free.

Words are a metaphysical formula that can shape anyone, build things up and also burn things down. It’s important to understand the depth of our words and only use intentional delivery.

My writing has saved my life before, and it will again. I know that despite any crappy hand that I’m dealt my words will never leave me to suffer alone. I know that when I have questions with no answers that one way or another writing will bring me to an answer even when it’s not the answer I want. Because words never lie. They aren’t one-sided. They leave little room for interpretation, they are strung together intentionally. And much like christmas lights, if one doesn’t work, none do.

I am my words. I am my stories. I am my written thoughts.

My words are my psyche. This will never change, because even when I am gone my words will live on.

So who am I? Well honestly who knows, but I do know one very important thing. I am whatever I already became, what I am now and whatever my words help me to become.