Just Write

 

I can’t pinpoint when it happened, this slow eke of confidence. I turn to my husband and say, “But I want to be extraordinary!” and he tells me I’m enough and I don’t believe him.

 

There are words that shine and some that glower, and punch and twinkle and illuminate and waltz and float and eat your brain, and I want to write all of them. I don’t want to apologize, say “I think” or “P.S.” or “Not right now.” The spiral tightens around my fingers, a paralyzing net, and all because I’m tired and processing and pulling paragraphs out of my head like earthworms from dirt.

 

Was there a time I had something to say?

 

Did it matter?

 

I read a lot about going beyond or deep or elsewhere. Stretching the boundaries of how you write and what; yet I spend so much time watching how others do it that I can’t beckon my worms anymore.

 

It’s always been my bane: No confidence and comparison. There’s two of us: The one who writes anyway and the one who wants to be extraordinary and ties hands beyond backs.

 

I search for the writing I want to be, and it leads to self flagellation and bone beating and soul crushing. I can’t reach beyond, I can’t get there, I don’t have it in me.

 

What if that’s true?

 

I ask the one who writes anyway.

 

This was her answer.

 

Written through inspiration from Heather’s Just Write series.