There are reasons why I write. Everyone has their own. I have mine. I don’t write to please the person who might happen to read it. I don’t write because I like stories. I don’t write because I feel like I need to be heard. I write so I can get rid of all the things that live in my mind. I write so I can get a couple hours of sleep at night. I write to keep the tears behind my eyelids. I write to keep the thoughts in my head sane.

No one truly understands what I have to say. I don’t think any of us truly understand what any writer has to say. We try our hardest. We sit down and try to pick out metaphors and interpret what it is that the author means. Apparently no interpretation is wrong. I think every interpretation is wrong. No one knows what the author meant except the author themselves. Even then it’s a little iffy.

I don’t understand why we have to tear apart everything that’s so beautiful and pure and try and figure out what it means. Why would we look at a flower and wonder how long it has before it dies? What’s keeping it alive? Why can’t we just read something that came from the deepest darkest places in a person and understand that we’ll never really know what they meant, what they were feeling, who they were . . .

I normally hate the statement “you don’t know my life,” but in truth I don’t. Even if I think that I do I don’t. No matter how much someone shares with you there’s still something that’s all their own that they’ll never share. It doesn’t matter how many papers I write, how much work I do, how much poetry I scribble no one will ever hear me the way I’m supposed to be heard. There are things that I say that no one will ever find the meaning to. Not with all the interpretation in the world. I know what I mean and that’s all that really matters to me.

I sit and pour out my heart and splatter my emotions all over a page to be read and analyzed and graded, and it’s not about the grade. I don’t write for class. I write to escape. I write to release things. I write to get rid of the tension that builds behind my eyes and presses against my skull. I couldn’t care less about a comma in the wrong place or a sentence that doesn’t sound quite right. If it sounds wrong it’s because it feels wrong. I can’t turn something incredibly wrong into something right on paper. Things don’t work that way.

I don’t care what I’m supposed to be writing about. I don’t care how much I’m supposed to be writing. I’m not writing for you. I’m writing for me. I’m so sick of hearing people tell me that what I write is disturbing and that I should write happier things. Don’t they realize that if my life was happy I would write happy things? No one’s life is easy. No one’s life is truly good, but we all have to find a way to keep going. This is mine. If you don’t want to read the scary things that I put into words then don’t. It’s not my problem.

I write about horrible things because that’s what I think about. Everything I’ve ever said has at one point lived in my brain. I keep it mild for public view anyway. There’s a reason that my personal computer is personal. No one needs to know what I really see when I close my eyes. The things that I think about while I’m struggling for sleep. I don’t need help and I’m not crying out for it. I’m helping myself by writing these things down. You’re just lucky enough to read it.