I Am A Writer

It has taken me 44.49 years to say those words. I've been writing creatively since I was 7, but never considered myself a writer. Have you ever read anything I've written? Well you're reading this aren't you? Have I ever been published outside my blog? Yes, I used to write a column back in the 90's and I even had a (potentially) award winning article about Michael Jackson published in a small newspaper in St. Louis a few years back. I am a writer.

Writers write. And I write. I'll write about anything. Politics, romance, love (and yes love is different from romance), war, family, money-it doesn't matter, I'll write about it. Ask me about the great writers of yester-year and I'll admit with confidence that I've hardly read any of them. Who did Mark Twain read? Shakespeare, who did he read? Don't know do you? Well neither do I-which is why I don't read anything the people they read wrote, nor do I read anything Twain or Shakespeare wrote. I'm a writer, not a reader-didn't you read the title of this blog?

Writing is something that was gifted to me. It was recognized in me at an early age and cultivated by those along the way who discovered my ability to poetically express my thoughts through words. Am I a great writer? Hardly-I'm just a writer. That feels good to say-I'm a writer.

I don't know why it took me so long to muster up the courage to say those words, I am a writer. And now that I've said them, I can't stop myself. I am a writer. Will I ever finish a novel? Perhaps, I started one years ago and never completed it-but there is plenty of material to encourage me to continue. I think the very reason I quit was the very reason it took me so long to admit what I've always known-I don't like talking about myself, therefore it was difficult to admit that I was a writer. And what was said novel about? Me. About my thoughts, my hopes, my dreams, my wishes, and I couldn't bare the thought of looking foolish in the eyes of those who mean so much to me. So I shelved the damn thing. But perhaps it's time to dust off the old manuscript and breathe life back into it because I am a writer.

A couple of nights ago, I watched my only brother die. Literally. I was there when he breathed his very last breath on this earth-when his heart beat for the very last time. I watched my mother, a woman whom I love more than life itself, place her hand on his lifeless body, searching for a heartbeat in a chest cavity that would no longer have one. I heard her subconsciously utter the words, "He's still warm." And in the ensuing hours, amidst all the pain and misery I experienced, what did I turn to? Writing. I wrote-emoted, expressed, shared. I laid bare all of my feelings with a momentous fervor I'd never experienced before in my life. I turned to the one thing that could provide me comfort-writing. Did I care if anyone read what I wrote? No, not at all. I just wrote and thought and wrote until I felt better. And then I wrote some more. If you ask me what I feel now I would simply tell you peace. A comforting peace I never thought achievable through writing. Sure, I've written about my life experiences before, but there is something about the finality of death, and it's affect on people that makes you take notice of things you've never noticed before. Why did my brother have to die? The answer lay silently in the thoughts and words that floated around aimlessly in my head. And when I sat down at the keyboard and began carefully selecting the letters and words and nouns, verbs and adjectives and arranging them in sentences that answered the painful questions that plagued me, I realized that I was a writer. Perhaps the greatest gift of all my brother gave me was the gift of writing. Not so much because he taught me how to write, but because in death he showed me why I should write. His death taught me that I should share my world with those who would take the time to step into my shoes and allow themselves to experience life through my written words.

I am no longer ashamed or afraid to utter those four very precious words, I am a writer. I've watched my older sister pursue her love for writing with a passion unmatched by me. She too has the gift and she has decided not to let it go to waste. I am a writer. Will the words that I write ever feed me? I don't know, nor do I care because if I did, that would make me something less than a writer-that would make me a hack. I am a writer and writers write. And from this day forward, if someone asks me what it is that I do, I will look them squarely in the eye and say to them in life what my brother taught me to say through his death, I am a writer.

TPOKW