Why Do I Write ......

..... words and thoughts and feelings that to some people seem too private to put out before the world?

I don't communicate well.  I can't communicate well.  Not verbally.  I don't know why, I don't know what lies behind that ..... I just know that it is what it is.  I've tried to do better with it, but I can't.

But I can write.  I know that.  
I never thought I could "write write" ..... you know, like write anything for other people to read, or write anything that people would connect with or even think was good.  I never, ever saw myself as a writer.  All I knew was ..... I could write my feelings down when I couldn't speak them.  I could get them out of me by writing them.  
And so I did. 
A few times in my life.  
When I needed to speak deeply to someone ...... REALLY deeply, I wrote to them.  It's the only thing I could do to communicate what I was feeling.

It wasn't until Jim died that it became something more than that.  
Or that I started to finally understand that it was more than I thought it was.  
I started seeing comments from readers who I didn't know were reading.  
People in our community would stop me and tell me what they thought of my writing. 
At first I just shrugged the positiveness off, the way we often shrug off compliments.  But slowly, very slowly, I started to believe that what I wrote was more important than I thought it was.  What I wrote was connecting with other people.  
Especially other widows/widowers.

And once I knew that, I could feel a piece of my heart actually healing.  
The horribleness in my life let someone else know that they were not alone in the horribleness of theirs.  And they felt comforted.  And I did, too.  I also felt that Jim's death, and my living it, was bringing good to people.  
And I needed to know that.  
I clung to that.

I still do.

So I still write.  Not so much for me anymore, but for the men and women out there who need to know that they are not alone, that they are not crazy, that what they're feeling is normal, and that they, too, have to learn how to be selfish in order to survive.  
I write for them.

And I will continue to write for them.

Because it's what God wants of me.

I know that without a doubt.

I also know that sometimes what I write isn't understood by the people in my life.  Sometimes it hurts them to read how I'm feeling, rather than being told by me.  And no matter how much I explain how this works ..... it's difficult for them to understand.  They don't get that sometimes I don't know what I'm feeling until my fingers start typing.  MOST of the time I don't know what I'm feeling until I write it.  I also know that I'm not alone in this tendency.  But it's hard to grasp it if you don't have a problem communicating verbally.

So this leaves me stuck between a rock and a hard place.  
I need to keep writing.  
I HAVE to keep writing. 
And I have to write for others.  But I don't want to have to censor what I write because there's some chance that it won't be understood by everyone.

And I still write to sometimes get my feelings out.  Because I STILL am unable to either verbalize them, or am not even aware that they are lurking beneath the surface.

I can't MAKE someone understand that.  
They either get it, and accept it; don't get it, yet accept it; or don't get it and don't accept it.

I am unable to change them.

And I have come to terms with that.

This doesn't mean that I won't keep trying to learn how to communicate with spoken words.  I do try.  I will keep trying.  But if I don't know what I'm feeling .... how can I find the words to explain it to someone else?

So there you go ..... an explanation (that you never really asked for) of why I write.  I used to write for me.

Now I write for you.


Happy Saturday, Peeps.
:)