It started in trickles…

a delivery from staggering pain of loss that needed to find an escape from my troubled soul. I tried drinking – often into stupors – but that was inconveniently debilitating and time consuming. And I consider time to be my single most valued commodity.

So I cut down a little on the drinking (come on now – I ain’t no saint) and started releasing fragments of that pent up emotion in something that isn’t just pissed away the next day – words.

I spill my guts on to the page.

I dabbled in poetry when I was a child, but I never wrote in earnest until a few years ago. Now my musings don whatever costume portrays their personality best – poems, stories, screenplays, love letters to my people.

Today writing consumes me.

Besides being cathartic, it’s blossomed to rewarding. Not only in that I receive occasional recognition for decent writing skills, no – it goes beyond that.

For a writer to be made aware that the overwhelming passions she lays bare on the page and entrusts to the reader’s eye are understood, are appreciated and are ultimately felt by the reader is…, well it’s… How do I complete that sentence?

…

This isn’t anything unique to me, many writers I’ve spoken with confirm this truth: we write, we live to hear someone say of our writing —

“It makes me feel.”

Thank you, Mom.

*

– debi