Why I Write

I write because I’m scared of becoming my mother. No. That came out wrong. My mother is easily one of the most intelligent, loving, and elegant human beings I will know in my life. I hope to be half of the career woman and mother she is. So, let me clarify.

I write because I don’t want to forget things. I don’t want to wake up in ten years and forget what I felt for that one boyfriend my sophomore year of high school. His name was Kyle, and he was an incredibly talented musician, although he’d never admit it. He wrote a song for me on his piano once and taught me how to play it. It’s the only song I can play by heart. My mom doesn’t remember the name of her high school boyfriend, let alone his touch or his words or what he gave her on Valentine’s Day.

I want to remember snow skiing with my dad in the Sierra Nevada’s, how we slowly approached a run that was marked “black diamond” and looked over the edge. I can hear my dad saying I didn’t have to go down it that year. I can picture him in that 90s, neon, one-piece ski get-up and goggles. I followed my dad everywhere on those mountains. The very next year, I conquered that same black diamond run. He was so proud of me.

I never want to forget the taste of that first shot of liquor in a friend’s basement. I couldn’t understand why anyone would drink something so terrible. My face scrunched up like I was smelling cow manure or a dead skunk wafting through a car heater. But in some strange way, it was a precious moment. Brutal, but invaluable.

So I write because I fear the degeneration of my mind. Because unlike my mother, I never want to forget what my first apartment looked like. It made me feel like an adult for the first time because I had to go grocery shopping by myself. I spent at least fifteen minutes trying to find spinach in the lettuce section. Wouldn’t spinach be near lettuce? I also had to ask three different moms rolling around anxious children in carts where to find chili powder. They had clearly triumphed over the confusion of the grocery store years ago and navigated it while talking on their cell phone and listening to their five-year-old ask for Fruit Loops. I guess the good news is that the chili powder perfectly seasoned the Mexican quinoa salad I made that weekend. Sometimes the reward is worth the search.

And maybe, one day, when I’m seventy, or even more frighteningly thirty-five, my mind won’t allow me to recall that it took me three tries in the oven and microwave to get the damn salmon to cook all the way through. And even when I did eat it, it was still a little raw.

When my mom found some letters she had written to her parents from her time as a camp counselor in college, she sat at the breakfast table and read them one by one. For the first time, I saw her begin to remember the little things from times past. Her voice brightened as she recalled the kids she instructed and the concert she wasn’t able to attend on her day off because she didn’t have the money. I wish she had written down the rest of her life too, not just that summer. I want to hear her stories and her dreams. But I don’t blame her for forgetting.

Last night, I went through some of my posts from several months ago on a blog I’ve kept for nearly six years. It amazed me how quickly I had already forgotten the intensity of feelings like fear and infatuation that had occurred only last semester. With every day, I am growing and learning. How does the young woman from then seem so innocent and scared to me now? Maybe she’s not so different from the person I see in the mirror today, but I never want to lose that girl as she transforms.

I write because I fear death. The spoken word is too fleeting; it is too often forgotten. But writing? Writing has permanence that only fire and computer viruses can destroy. If I keep a written record of my thoughts and ideas, someone might read them. I’ll be remembered. I’ll feel like my time on this earth mattered.

So maybe I write because I’m a little selfish too. Maybe I write because I’m hopeful some of it is good enough to mean something to someone. What if my writing could change things? People? Provoke new ideas? Alright, maybe I’m naive. Maybe I’ll read this next year or decade and not recognize the idealist, pipe-dreamer who wrote this very piece. But then again, there’s the chance I will succeed in producing something of significance.

There’s a romance in knowing that someone who began as ordinary went on to write the U.S. Constitution, The Great Gatsby, or Obama’s first inaugural speech. Someone writes peace treaties and instruction manuals and news articles and screenplays. And these things go on to change the entire world. Maybe not in a big way, but they change it. I’m ridiculous enough to believe that if I develop the skills, I could write one of those great things. I could be one of those people I so admire. Knowledge is power, but so is the ability to put together words.

I write because there are no rules. In a world of procedures, checklists, and formalities, I have found that writing is my chance to set my mind free. It is creative and challenging and entirely my own, and if I want to extend this sentence in an exhausting sequence of conjunctions and commas, I can do that because it is simply what I’ve decided to do, and no one cannot stop me, and perhaps I like to write in this way. It may not be accepted by an English professor, but nonetheless it is possible. Ideas, imaginations, emotions, and actions can be conveyed with simple words, through this act called “writing.”

“Isn’t it strange how with a combination of twenty-six letters you can steal someone’s heart and captivate their soul? Even stranger is how with a different combination of twenty-six letters you can make their eyes fill with tears and give them enough pain to last a lifetime.” – Quote from anonymous blogger

I find it amazing. And so I write.