i’ve always kind’ve thought of myself as a decent writer. i’ve been reflecting a lot recently on why i write so much, or why i even like it at all. i think my brain is a heavy storm and forcing myself to write is like sticking my arm right into the eye of it, pulling words out of the wreckage and seeing my thoughts for what they truly are. most days i can’t really decipher what i’m thinking; it’s too loud and windy in my brain space. most days i don’t trust myself or my own thoughts; i don’t give them merit, i tell myself that everything i’ve ever thought is unclean and unjust. i think writing is helping me put a stop to that. it makes me feel neutral, like “right and wrong don’t matter anymore, because this is what i think, and this is how i feel.”

but i’m wondering if just being capable of materializing my thoughts on a page still makes me a writer, because i’ve never stopped writing about the same thing: shitty thoughts. never do i write about what’s right in front of me, or stray from using writing as a tool to therapize myself. only about pain, or sad things, obsession, emotional destitution. what would happen if i took all those things away? would i still be a decent writer? i wonder how happy people do it. i wonder how they draw inspiration from joy, and glow, and possibility beyond the anticlimax of reality. i would like to figure that out. i would like to evolve past the need to depend on sadness as fuel for creation.