Q & A

A: To remember.
To validate.
To appreciate.
To inspire.

I suck at talking, really. Just ask my husband, who usually has to pry my head open with a crowbar to find out what’s on my mind. I could quote someone eloquent and witty, like C.S. Lewis or House, M.D., and the words would still sound ridiculous coming out of my mouth. (Imagine a kindergartener who’s just swallowed a bottle of vodka and six helium balloons. Classy.)

When I write my thoughts down, though, I feel like they matter. I can actually convey my meaning without all the squeaking and the slurring and the drunken-five-year-old stammering. Often, I’m not even sure what I think until it slips out the ends of my fingers onto a page, and only once it’s written can I see its etchings on my personality… and then I feel a million kinds of validated. Maybe even a kazillion.

Writing does all sorts of lovely, warm, hot-chocolatey things to my emotional center as well. It makes me slow down enough to see the beauty in everyday life and scrapes calluses off my heart until I’m madly in love with everyone I should be madly in love with. I suppose it’s a way to both preserve and cultivate the precious pieces of my life. This might make me certifiably insane (that is, if I weren’t already, ::cough::), but I would take a day on a comfy couch with my laptop over a day at the spa. Or a day wearing plaid atrocities and hitting little white balls with sticks. Or whatever else real people do to relax.

I don’t really try to inspire–you should know by now that I consider myself as inspiring as Cream of Wilted Lettuce–but every once in a while, a bit of my heart on a page connects with a bit of someone else’s heart. Those tiny moments of relational electricity keep me buzzing for days. I’m learning to loosen up, to take personal honesty a little more public, and I love that it matters to others. Even at my most lettucesoupy, I want my words to matter to others.

Q: Why do you write?