Very emotional piece today!!!!!! Buckle up!!!!!
Why we write?
In our lives, we have to expose ourselves to so many things that we don’t want. Of course, if everything that we wanted to happen kept happening over and over again, we’d actually think that we are the rulers of the world and that we can actually do whatever we want with our own lives and with everyone’s lives, really. That’s… obviously not how it works.
The opposite, actually.
We are exposed to so many of the terrible, so much of the unwanted. Some of us lost significant people very early on, some of us lost significant people by choosing to follow a different path, and all of these paths we take, sometimes guided by so much as our own instincts, sometimes shaped and guided by the loss itself, determines who we are, who we were, and who we decide to be, because it is a decision. Everything in life is about decision.
Sometimes we think we want something, sometimes we think we are something SO BAD, we’re almost entirely convinced of it, but, then, life shows us that this is not the path we’ll go, and here we are, confronted with loss again.
I lost my grandfather when I was six, and ever since he passed, he indirectly taught me so much about love, and about family, and about heritage, if only he decided not to chain smoke his entire life, he could’ve taught me so much more. I left the “love of my life” hanging, blocked on everything, changed cities, jobs, hair colors. Everything in life is about decision.
Everyone thought we’d be happy together forever, everyone but me, and as it takes only one to stop the tango, I left. Everyone thought they had me all figured out. As Didion used to say that we tell ourselves stories in order to live, I feel like, in a similar way, we also put people inside boxes to make a matter as complex as the human existence slightly more bearable. Don’t forget to not do that, and don’t forget that everyone’s a fucking hypocrite, even you.
Either way, what we do with all this loss, all of the unwanted, all of the pain, all of the change, is what differentiates us.
That’s when art steps in for those who write and for those who read.