I have always had the brain of a writer. From a young age, I have always written things with the internalized expectation that someone would read it. I can even remember using the names of male relatives if I wrote a story, because I did not dare use the name of any male classmates, for fear of ridicule. I was supposed to think boys had cooties, right? I certainly couldn't name a character after any of them!
I think it is because I am wired this way I have had such a tough time writing down what I consider to be "my story." It is difficult to write about yourself and your experiences in a first-person way, much less when you do so from the mindset of "what if someone reads this?" And for most of the time my story has been circling my brain, it has been one that I would not want to share openly. With a chosen handful, at my choosing and in my own way, certainly. Broadly and where anyone I know (or don't know) may well have access to it? Oh, but no.
But in the last few weeks, somehow, that part of my brain has shut off. Well, mostly. I still find myself writing and editing as I go, in the way I would if I intended it to be for public viewing. But somehow the wall in my brain that has stopped it from forming into words and taking shape on the page has finally collapsed. Will I put it out for public view one day? Time will tell. Will I finally get it out of my head and onto paper? I'm well on my way already. And I can't help thinking, maybe that will open the door to future writing. Maybe not having written something that has been so important a project in my own mind has blocked me from other work. One day soon, I hope to see what has been on the other side of that wall all this time.
