I’m meant to write about why I write. I thought to make it a short story, maybe one about a journalist who was raped in her childhood, tried to talk about it and no one listened, now growing to be somebody everyone has to listen to. Now telling the stories of others. Maybe a story about someone who got neglected as a child, and would sit behind the closed doors, hands pressed tight against their ears so they wouldn’t hear the fighting outside, a child that’d write hoping to escape into one of those realities. Maybe a short story about someone that loses memories little by little, and decides to put them down, exactly what happened, and exactly how it made them feel, so they don’t lose precious memories.

But it’s meant to be about why I write. Not why any of these fictional people write, so I thought to write nonfiction. But I hate nonfiction. Because writing begs a vulnerability from the writer. You can draw out words laced with all the emotions in the world, but you haven’t lived any of those lives, so the emotion in the end, is drawn from somewhere within.

But at least you can hide it in fiction. Make the setting so outlandish that the parts of you blended in are blended in to the background. Make the characters have different names and grow in different parts of the world. Aggravate the emotion, numb the emotion. Do anything. Anything so they wouldn’t know it’s you. Draw out characters so believable, so human, no one would think to open the trench coat to see the little child trying to pass off as normal.

Non fiction doesn’t really let you hide. The vulnerability is out in the open, you write the words with your blood as ink. The curtains are torn off, and there you are. Naked. All your characters are gone, and you’re just a little kid, you’re just a little kid trying to be normal.

I’m meant to write about why I write, but I’m as clueless as the next spotted blue dog. I don’t even remember when I started writing, all I can remember is that it wasn’t good. All I can remember is that I couldn’t stop.

I don’t want to write sometimes. Sometimes I can’t come up with a story. Sometimes I can’t hit the keyboard. Sometimes I can’t settle on something. Sometimes I can’t bring myself to love what I’ve written.

Yet I write. Why?

Oh sorry, I’m meant to be the one answering that, not posing it. I guess I write because well, what else would I do? How else am I meant to be living? Where else is proof of my existence? How else do I pull out the mess of my mind? How else do I find humanity? If I don’t tell my story, who will?

I’ve been writing for quite a while, and I don’t know why. I just do it. Sometimes to bring a message, sometimes just an emotion, sometimes just trying to show the world something cool, sometimes I keep it to myself despite writing it down, sometimes to keep my thoughts flowing, sometimes to stop my thoughts from flowing. It’s what I do.

If not this, then what?