Words.

At some point, I have allowed myself to forget how important writing is to me.

When I was younger (I'm talking middle and high school), I wrote poetry. Lots and lots of it. And most of it was good, for someone my age. I probably wrote at least one poem a week. Some of them were good. Others were okay. A lot of them were a strange form of therapy that I will probably never share with anyone, but they were good in the sense that they allowed me to have a voice during times that I felt like my heart was an open wound and no spoken words, no conversations with anyone could even attempt to heal me or give me any kind of release.

I spent many of my teenage years feeling depressed and alone. Even though I had an amazing family-- a family I could actually say anything to, and have my feelings and opinions understood and valued. But I was a teenager. It didn't seem that way back then. I did a lot of living and learning in those years, and I'm thankful that I came out of it all and became something I could be proud of.

I was one of the kids I wouldn't want my phantom children to hang out with. Partying.Lots of drinking.  Sleeping around (not as much as some, but enough that I still sometimes feel shame when I think about it). Pregnant at fourteen. (More on that someday. Maybe.) For a while, after the pregnancy (and the abortion), during what I can now say was the darkest chapter of my life, I was a cutter. I wanted to die, but I was too cowardly (or something) to do anything about it, aside from slowly sabotage myself.

But, like I said, I grew out of and away from that life, and I'm thankful for that. Proud of myself for rising above that. What I miss, though--what I sometimes still mourn-- is that all the poetry I wrote, fueled by my adventures, died with that girl. The girl I used to be.

Maybe it's still there--anything's possible. My writing is much more bland now, less fire and pain and wishing for death. More reasoning with myself, more day-to-day wandering and meandering from one topic to another. My writing now is that of a semi-content woman, wife, normal person with a pretty amazing little dose of ADHD thrown into the mix.

Sometimes I go weeks or months at a time without writing anything, which is sad, considering I spend much of my alone time writing inside my head. All these words and thoughts and random things--important things-- that go unwritten and unsaid.

I don't know why such a huge part of me is often left on the back burner. Why do I ignore something that is so much a part of who I am? Why isn't it a priority?

I think part of it is me willing myself to stop thinking. You know, sometimes I don't even know how I really feel about something until I start writing, when the words are coming to me faster than I can rationalize anything, or change my mind. They just appear on the page, and I can't bring myself to argue with them. They make perfect sense, once they're there.

So this is my goal: write something every day. Whether it's here, or in my journal, or even on some random scrap of paper that eventually disappears in the chaos of my home, I need to write. And I'm good at it, without really even trying.

And maybe eventually, I'll start really trying again. And when that happens, I can start working on something I've wanted to do for a very long time. I can start piecing together my life, one story at a time.