I write because it keeps me alive. It nourishes the vain, hungry for validation me who remember mum’s compliments on my first ever writing at 9 years old. It feeds the outspoken, jittery 11 years old me who expected so much out of myself after every writing class…I’m going to be a writer, I said to the back of my mother on the motorcycle. I’m going to be an actor and a singer, I told my cousin in between our rock ‘n’ roll guitar riff. I guess I could be a journalist so I might be the favourite niece to my favourite uncle. I think perhaps I should be a lawyer so I could take care of my mother when she gets old. Dreams fade, and the idea of living on pretty words capitalise into an office job that keeps stable hours and give out annual leave. But words were always around. Existing. Present. There.
I could create characters on papers, I could develop them on screen, I could mould them in court. I don’t remember a day in which words weren’t the hands that pulled me up and the kiss that tuck me in. Dead Poets Society’s Mr Keating allowed me to hone that love and ability into sentences but thinking back to my dream of being a vampire’s wife at 9 (part-time to acting and singing, obviously), I wonder if it was because Count Dracula’s deep ember of a voice that echo his bone-chilling speech through the crack of his castle and the flapping wings in the bats cave would be a shivering dream to listen to. I certainly had no affinity to biting people or sleeping in a coffin, and even the morbid curiosity to death and blood mirror the existential reflection of Emily Dickinson, the kind you could write poetry about it.
Anyway, my point is that I grew up. Life gets tough, and I don’t write very much anymore. The sun avoids my very presence, or I from it, because I never woke up early enough to say hi, and it never waits for me long enough after work to say goodbye. That, combine with the fact that the word “ambivert” feels like a CIA front to me, when I put pen down on paper, I couldn’t tell you how the world taste and feel like anymore. Yet, I just keep trying to write anyway. Go ahead and add the fault of a stubborn Sisyphus escaping from the hand of Hermes and Hades to my list of qualities.
I write because it still keeps me alive. Even after the short 19 years of life that felt longer, writing and words keep this insecure, scared teenager from crashing out. I still think, like an indescribable irrational fear that once I step over the 20s line, the industry will come and take my soul. This is not a roar of indignant or a cry of rebellion so much as a meek attempt at not losing myself to the grind of the money-making world. I could only write about myself currently, as you can see, journaling has allowed my vulnerability to pour out with ease and comfort. But I’m clinging to the hands that feed me begging for more. I am pleading words to not leave me. I tell them, the 29 letters in the Vietnamese alphabet and the 26 in English, that they were my first lovers. I cry to them that I remember how the dog-eared yellow pages of Harry Potter change my life and how Sherlock Holmes and his companion is still in me somewhere. I even play the unfair card too, saying how could they made me laugh and cry at Mr Stink and Gangsta Granny only to leave me here dead and dry. I want to write characters too. I want to be brave enough to test new words on my tongue and anchor the faintly beating creative heart against this fleeting life. Words stood and stare at my accusation if you could believe me. Never the one to say much, they only whisper slowly, melodically, agonisingly patient and waiting: Keep Writing.
Valerie Metis Humphrey, excerpt from The Fiery Soul of A Leo (A Diary)
