Writing is soul searching. I used to believe that the sole reason why I write was for the fame it automatically summoned when the readers get to read me – and egoistic conviction I had to relinquish a long time ago for a) it is so conceited to admit so and b) that mantra will not blaze one’s writer spirit far, I can attest to that!

I was in sophomore year in high school when my mom passed away.  Seeing her lifeless body lying on her deathbed filled my heart with pain. To say that the world’s weight is on my shoulder was an understatement. It was more than that. I felt that sadness in my heart so alive. I was sent to darkness and there were voices instructing me how to feel. But no one knows what I felt because even I myself did not understand half of it.

For the first time, life hit me so badly I did things without knowing where I am going or what I am about to do so I grabbed a paper and pen and began to write. Remembering the day of accident up to the moment my mom was in coma. I wrote the arguing feelings in my heart until three pages were filled of words and drowned with tears. These words suddenly half my grieving as it seemingly served as the other child who feels the same way as I do. Though eventually I realized my thoughts are broken, random and still unknown. I tried to write again.

And that’s how it started.

The writing stuff accompanied me since then. It has become my way of identifying the greater hurts. I know I have to forgive to move on but first I had to identify what had to be forgiven. On paper I disclose myself in words even though I must concede that I was scared to let other people see the real me. The papers that contained my mishaps are hidden beneath my clothes. I was so weak to accept that I am more compassionate than I am willing to admit.

Besides that, I am selfish and insecure but I discovered that writing makes me less so. When you write you impart a piece of yourself. Though writing has been my way of distinguishing myself to others it is also the bridge that heralds the voice of the unheard to the majority. There is the doubt that no one could possibly understand what they feel yet it simply not always the case.

Writing has saved me from insanity. I do write because, as F. Sionil Jose wrote in 2008, there is so much hypocrisy and cussedness in us and writers may be able to exorcise a bit of these. Observing the society would make you see how sh—happens. Someone has to notice this; someone has to voice it out. If I let injustice to rule and choose my own comfort to endure over the truth, then that is no better than being a blind man. A blind man can’t see the human condition yet can feel it and we are no blind man yet we feign blindness just to save our position and made ourselves more pathetic and even worst.

Writing is helping me mature. The act itself forced me to face my flaws and weaknesses. I am 21 and I have already experience all the rejections in the world (now, that’s an overstatement!) from my journalism class that offered me grades that range from C+ to D- up to the college publication which employed a literary editor who had scrapped my articles even before I submitted it on a hardcopy, that editor that fussed around the office because I couldn’t generate arguments like De Quiros and did not have the wit of De Veyra. I also wrote about my co-members who are as approachable and as helpful as they don’t exist. Writing let me poured out all my angst on paper even before I did something stupid with that angst. It also gives me time to stop and think and let my most coveted desires to hurt be buried in my having-many-irons-in-the-fire life.

Eight years after mom’s death I have grieved my loss. She is gone and could never be replaced but writing has helped me to move on. My life is back together again. I quit the school publication sooner than I should yet it made me able to exchange smiles with my editor whenever we see each other in the corridor.

I couldn’t be a “professional writer” on the basis that the term suggests: writer by profession but I could choose to live with how Richard Bach defines a professional writer, an amateur who didn’t quit. For as long as I would meet a person that would inspire me to write I would find a hundred more stories to console this heart. Writing is not easy but is worth the hard work for the real cause and that is to unite man with his lonely and sensitive spirit.

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I hate long post too.