do you actually love writing, or are you just trying to find the right words to explain why you are the way you are?

from a writer who wrote about the thing she was most afraid to write.

“the thing you are most afraid to write — write that” and today, I did.

“do you actually love writing or are you just trying to find the right words to explain why you are the way you are?”

That question kept me awake for a while and haunted my mind like a thought that I can't escape. Do I really love to write or am I just in a constant cycle of finding the right words to express myself? To explain why am I like this?

Writing has always been my passion. It had always been my escape. It was the only way I could untangle my thoughts and make sense of my feelings — I write, mainly, because I cannot understand my feelings but I can describe them. Each word was like a piece of puzzle that I needed to fix in order to understand why I am like this? And I started to wonder if my love for writing was real, or was it just my way to cope.

Am I really passionate about writing, or was it just a way for me to find the written words to explain my confusion? Each article I’ve written, each poem I’ve done, each story I’ve started felt like a desperate attempt to find an answer — to find clarity to make sense of the chaos inside me.

Maybe my love for writing was just a need, a way to deal with the mess in my mind. Maybe it wasn’t really the writing itself that I loved, but the relief it brought, the brief moments of peace.

But then, whether I wrote out of love or need for peace, it didn’t matter anymore. Writing was my lifeline, my way of finding myself in the noise of the world. But the realization that I might never truly know why I write left me feeling empty, lost in a sea of words that could never fully explain why I am the way I am.