I've missed writing. Words were dearer than life to me as I grew up. I tore through books when I was a kid - like I was lost in a hot barren desert and those smooth inky pages were the only thing that could assuage the undying thirst. The only thing that could carry me to far off lands and make me forget the sun on my burnt skin and the stifling heaviness of the air I breathed.
Poor mom couldn't buy books fast enough to keep up, so I became a regular at the public library. In middle school my kindred spirit Amanda and I joined a writing group at the local library, in which our peers were roughly 20 to 70 years older than us (and what a motley crew of entertaining characters they were!). I looked forward to those meetings with the same fervor my cat holds for the sound of the can opener.
In high school, after moving to Marietta, I took gifted creative writing classes. Amid the chaos that is high school life, I was lucky to have a literary outlet with other my own age. There were so many talented writers in that class and I learned a lot from them.
In college, my writing shifted in a more "serious" direction - I became a reporter and photographer for the school paper. I enjoyed every little bit of it. With every assignment I was meeting new people and learning things I'd never known. I also still read books and poetry whenever I could. But something happened with that shift. Something was lost. The fire that had once burnt so fiercely ebbed to ashy glowing coals, longing for a breeze to stoke up the flames but too tired and drained to become a blaze on its own. My essays and articles and papers were undeniably creative and witty. But everything was forced. It was a formula designed to get the grade or make the deadline.
Writing for the sake of just writing was sadly largely missing from my life. Words no longer constantly bubbled at the surface of my mind. There was no longer effortless poetry waiting to flow into existence from my thoughts to my fingertips. Stories filled with dark, interesting, complex characters no longer sprang to mind while people-watching in coffee shops. The door to countless realms of imagination had shut, and I was left with just one world - the world of everyday life.
And then a few weeks ago, without a hint of warning, the words returned. What once came so easily to me began to trickle forth again, without so much as a squeak from the rusty spigot.
To say I've missed writing would be the greatest understatement.
I have no aspirations of becoming the next great poet or novelist.
But I do aspire to continue writing, and to never let it slip from my life again.
