Dear writing,
I never in a million years could have imagined how important you would become for me and for the way to find myself. I did my writing assignment in school but obviously it wasn’t something that I absolutely loved or particularly enjoyed. For the longest time, when people told me that they write down their feelings or something like that I felt like it would be a waste of my precious time. You know what? I could not have been more wrong.
Something that has been stuck in my mind these past weeks or maybe even months is how fast time flies. Especially in times where you’d want time to stop even if it is just for a little while. We try to capture feelings in pictures even if we forget to take them sometimes. We try to keep the moment alive somewhere that is outside of our memories and in something that is tangible. We are stuck in our head because of spiralling thoughts. The hardest part is often the fact that we try to do everything right in the here and now that we forget to really live for the moment, just because we are trying to do everything right for the future.
Somehow, I started writing lyrics when I was stuck in my head and negative thoughts kept coming around. This soon turned into a regular thing, where I not only put down my negative thoughts but also started writing about all the positive and loving things that were going on in my life. Nobody had to ever read, but I soon started to realise what people meant when they said that writing really helped them to cope with everything that was going on in their life. I started to experience it first-hand.
I remember one session with my therapist that really opened my eyes. If something helps you, makes you feel a little bit better or if it makes you a little bit of a better person than it will never be a waste of your time. So, whatever it is that you write, if it helps you, do it unapologetically.
Words are part of communication, we already talked about this a couple of weeks ago in the “Love letter to languages”. Especially in writing I now understand that it is not just a part of communicating with other people, but also a very big and crucial part in communicating with ourself. And honestly, if I don’t understand myself (at least a little bit), I am not able to be the best version of me to other people. Obviously, the people around you can help and be very useful when it comes to working on yourself, but there is a part which you just have to do on your own.
Maybe you write songs, maybe you write poetry, maybe you just write page after page not knowing where it is going to end, maybe you write down random words, maybe you write letters and maybe you write something completely different. Writing is not just putting some words onto paper; it is so much more than that. It is communication, capturing moments from the now into a forever kind of way, it is a coping mechanism. For me personally it is also a way of putting my thoughts into words and music in times where I find it hard to say them out loud and I love it.
All my love,
Anna
Dear Anna,
Writing…You wrote very interesting things about this topic! And I agree what you try to tell us.
It’s a gift when you want to canalize your feelings and try to put them to words, and you succeed to put these word in a report, a story or a poem. The wellknown Dutch poet Cees Nooteboom states: “… a lot of poems are insearch for their poets…they roam in the wide area of the words, and expect the bait of the perfect form they have to put in…”
That is the same with the feelings you have and which makes you restless…so trying to put these feelings into words can make you calm and secure… Thank you very much for this loveletter, Anna.
Best wishes,
Ed.