Will you allow me to share a glimpse into my friend’s obsessive-compulsive relationship with words?

Here is it, take a look:

This piece will not be my “standard issue” inspirational writing.

But still, I hope it lights a fire in you… perhaps in ways that you do not expect… in ways that inspire you to be your own archaeologist of sorts… in any way that works for you.

I am a writer

And I mean that in a much deeper way than “I am a person who writes.” It is the very essence of my being, right through to the center of my soul.

It is the same with stacks of blank notebooks and papers in shops. I salivate when I see them. I ache to take every one of them home and put words all over them. I’ve been like this since my earliest memories in childhood.

Friends have often told me that they admire my determination concerning my writing. I don’t see it that way; writing does not require my determination at all.

This started me wondering, if it doesn’t require determination, then what is it that makes me write?

Or more accurately, what is it that makes me need to write?

I write because I can — I write because my arm and hand need to feel the movement of the fountain pen across paper, which is far more satisfying than pecking away at a computer.

I write because it feels like a release of something rumbling around in my guts — It is a compulsion. Although a frustrating one when I need to do it but the words do not come, or when I am otherwise occupied and unable to play with them.

I write because it’s there — It’s like I’m part of something I cannot describe, something that wants telling, and it has chosen me, hunted me down, stalked me, and said, “There you are, you’ll do. You’ll say it because it needs to be said.”

And so I do.

I write because I’m lonely, and the words keep me company.

And the notebook and the pen, they are my friends. My beloved friends. My lovers. I caress them just as they caress me in my mind, heart, and soul.

The words are all I have.

They never leave me.

They roll through my head all the time, words, words, words, rambling, rushing, floating, racing, twisting, playing…tumbling like gymnasts, and they never run out of energy, never run out of momentum.

Words… writing words — this is my constant lover

What would I be without writing? It is unthinkable. It is incomprehensible.

Words — me.

Me — words.

You cannot separate us. If you do, it would surely mean my death, as to cut off my ability to communicate would most certainly end my life.

It is not just the outputting of words; it is also the inputting.

Conversation and gathering information is just as essential for me. Although I gather information every moment, I’m conscious because life and experiences are everywhere; every moment invites noticing what’s in it.

I would not want to live if I were reduced to being wordless and unable to write about what I notice in every precious moment.

Even the horrible moments are precious

They are life.

They teach.

They impress.

They want to notice, so I record what they ask me to write.

I write because I must — As surely as the sun rises and sets, as surely as the moon will smile knowingly on me until I draw my last breath. I have to say something, and it might not be good. It might not even be mine.

It might come from “out there.”

But it comes through me, and I must write.

I write because I’ve been silenced for much of my life — and when others were not doing it to me, I silenced myself; I’d been very well-trained. I have nothing to say but plenty to feel and sometimes the only way to feel it is to write it — or else I bury it.

I hide it even from myself.

I’ve been so good at silencing myself when others did not; I haven’t even known I was doing it.

I don’t want to feel, and this is why I write.

How ridiculous. How simple. How sacred.

I write to release the crap that lurks and hides — I write to let it out of prison — to free it — and more so, to free myself. The toxic sludge that steeps and rots inside me has been there for decades while I didn’t know what to write, didn’t have time or energy to write.

It’s been fermenting and eating away at me for a lifetime and now I must write and set us both free.

I write because it feeds me.

It feeds my soul.

It feeds my imagination.

It feeds my mind.

The words nourish me. They scramble around me in a flurry like a frantically tossed salad, like autumn leaves tumbling across the road in a gust of wind. They beckon and say, “Here I am; you must play with me.” And they play hide and seek, their favorite, with “Tag” being a close second.

And so I play with my friends who never leave me because it does my heart good.

They keep me young.

They teach me about myself. They teach me to be myself. My words love me no matter what, and this is why I write.

My words don’t mind if I’m miserable.

They are at least as miserable, right along with me. They don’t mind if I’m sad. They can cry far better than I. They will be with me always; they feel what I feel, and although sometimes they’re steeped in mud, they come out clear as crystal once they organize themselves.

And the light shines through them again; I can see.

I love my words even when we argue and it seems they don’t love me back.

We have a little battle now and then, and they remind me who’s boss, so I don’t give them orders, and I can write again.

I write because even without pen and paper, I would still string words together in my head, the same as if I were writing them down. But thank heaven for paper because writing is hypnotic for me. I feel my breathing slow. I zero in on the paper, the tip of the fountain pen. I feel my brain go into hyperfocus and overdrive while my body slides so easily into a trance, a place of relaxation that is meditative and calming.

I write because I breathe — and with every breath, I’m absorbing sounds and feelings and words and things that want digesting and then regurgitating as words. If I stop writing, it means I will have stopped breathing.

Even if I have nothing to say. Even if I have everything to say and no one hears it. I will have to carry on writing and breathing, being myself in a way I never was until now, and I have my words to thank for it.

I write because I need to dig.

I am an archaeologist, excavating everything outside but most frighteningly inside.

I will dig and expose, excavating the darkest, nastiest, hurting places in my soul. I don’t want to do it and I don’t enjoy it, but I must. It is no longer an option.

The time has come.

I write because it is time to tear myself open — rip into the darkness and rummage around in the dust, the decay, the rotting old rubbish that’s buried layer upon layer.

Yes, I must write this, too, because I want to know myself.

I can never really know anyone or anything other than — or better than — myself. Even if I think I know everything about a stone, its shape, its size, its color, its bumps, and smooth bits, even if I know its taste and its smell, I do not know the stone completely, for I am not the stone. I can never know what it is like inside the stone or what it’s like to be the stone.

I write because I’m not afraid to say what needs saying — I write because I am afraid to say what needs saying. Whether or not I’m afraid, it still needs saying.

And so I write.

And still, despite all of these reasons, there is something deeper that I do not understand, something that drives me to write that I cannot explain. I know only that I am compelled to drag the pen across page after page, making words, words.

But it doesn’t matter.

I don’t have to know why.

I just am.

I am a writer.

This article has been reprinted with permission from Angel RIBO’s LinkedIn page.