Why I Write

Why I Write by Meredith Heller  

I write to hear my own voice, because there are places of honesty and beauty that I go in my writing that I can't always go in my life, and I must, and because writing is where I grant safe passage for the shadings of meaning that I don't always communicate to myself and to others. When I write, I let the parts of me that hold my breath, breathe. I write to let the light into my being and to let the darkness out. I write to release my pain and my past, to understand why and who I am, to savor my life by naming the ingredients that flavor my moments, and to celebrate life in all of its excruciating tenderness.

I write to own myself, to capture the rhythms of my cycles: my journeys into the abyss and my travels through glory. I write to allow myself to feel, to climb inside my emotions and explore their reaches and textures. I write to summon my tears, to let them wash me hot and clean then drain me empty and free. I write myself alive and reborn. I write myself whole and holy. I write to experience myself transformed. I write because it involves me in this mysterious process of discovery, and because writing is a ritual whereby I create myself.

I write to get naked and authentic, to delve into the marrow of my being where I make my blood. I write because I hurt and because I love. And so I won't lose anything. I write because I have always written and writing is how I know myself. I write because I am lonely and sensual and spiritual, and I need to make contact with the divine, and writing for me is like touching: it is rubbing and rolling my body against the divine until my boundaries dissolve and I no longer know where I start and where I stop, and I become part of the universal hum.

I write to make myself eternal, to leave a piece of me stained into the ethers. I write because I believe God listens for the places where we love and own ourselves. I write to keep myself company. I write because I can't sleep, because I find the darkness at 3am electric and intoxicating and writing is the way I communicate with that life energy. I write to grab onto the edge of shimmering chaos and ride it through lightning storms and come out stronger and clearer and a little bit crazier from having tasted the other side.

I write to access my subconscious like a Ouija board, to learn things about myself I may not have known and to make sure I master the things I’m learning. I write to make the world my own. I write to keep myself honest and to keep from watching TV. I write to keep my Muse intrigued. I write because I can't draw.