Yesterday I was writing in my journal and realizing what a basket-case I would be if I didn't write. I started thinking about how true artists of any type need to do what they do. Whether it's the authors of novels or poets or composers or painters. Throughout history, people have created things to express emotions that they couldn't express as well in any other way but through their art. An idea gnaws at their beings, eating them up until it forces it's way out. Sometimes they can't get it out fast enough, and they, like the artist VanGogh, succumb to insanity.
Looking through my own words in my journal, I found frustration and fear and loneliness. When I write stories I write the opposite. It's as though my journal is real life, and my stories are the world I create to escape that life. Both are necessary to my mental health I'm certain. The funny thing is, my poems, for the the most part, are the opposite. The best ones are about pain. To write poems about happy things seems to take more effort for me. I wrote a poem for children about my dog once...but it was about when he was lost, and how helpless it made me feel. But hey, what child doesn't know how it feels to lose something they love? And what child doesn't know how it feels to be helpless in a situation?
The point of all this rambling is just to say that this is not just what I do. It's who I am. It's what I need to do to live. Just like eating, sleeping, breathing...I have to write. Whether or not I get published, or if anyone but me takes the time to read what I write doesn't matter. Heck, people were using VanGogh's paintings to cover up holes in the wall, and as dartboards. Still, he went on, painting his dreams and nightmares, and I go on..
... writing mine.
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