Why I write

Have you ever left a conversation feeling sooooo disappointed in yourself? Your choice of words? Or lack thereof? Your demeanor? The one that might be perceived as a lack of interest? Overanalyzing the dialogue from the receiver’s end and thinking of all the much better routes you could have taken to lead to a more fruitful conversation?

I have. 

The feeling of regret and disappointment outweighs the feeling of satisfaction and excitement for the next encounter to potentially be had. I’d rather never see you again than have another unsatisfactory exchange.

I’m not boring. Not even close…

But my presentation says otherwise.

Rejection. That has to be it. I have a fear of rejection. A fear of what I have to say not being deemed good enough or substantial to the current topic of discussion.

Or maybe I want to be the listener—the aggressive head nodder reacting to everything you say, even when I may not agree with you or simply did not hear anything you said. 

Perhaps there’s something tracing back to my childhood? Something so incredibly painful that I’ve had no choice but to bury it in the deepest hollows of my mind, to the nearness of nonexistence. I tend to do that a lot, more often than I’d like to admit.

But Why?

Why do my words never sound as beautiful as the thoughts in my mind? 

Why does something as substantial and passionate as: 

“Don’t even get me started on French toast sticks, ESPECIALLY the ones at my college campus. I’d get up at the a** crack of dawn—and I’m NOT a morning person—to get some. Ugh! Even the thought of them at this very moment feels like some sort of torture to my soul.”

End up coming out as:

“I love French toast sticks too!” 

My brain is to my mouth what Shakespeare is to SparkNotes. My mind composes poems, while my mouth makes the greatest of efforts to summarize as much as it can, almost wishing for the conversation to end soon. Yet this is the one time I don’t want the conversation to end.

Maybe that’s one of the many reasons I’m always quiet; I’m too busy overthinking what to say to the point of not saying anything at all.

I’m envious. 

Envious of the ones who somehow always say the right things at the right time. The ones with impeccable comedic timing, effortless wit, along with the ability to glide through a conversation, whichever way it shifts. 

Not sure how to get there yet.

So, I write.

Writing gives my thoughts an endless amount of room to stretch out, and refine, and edit, and polish to my satisfaction. Something I can’t quite do with my words.

I write because it is the closest thing to voicing my thoughts—with intention, that is. And while my devices are filled with thousands of unfinished drafts of every topic imaginable, it is incomparable to the millions that never make it out of my mind.