Writing Break → Growth?
Not writing for months made me grow as a person?
I have not written a single poem since January 2021. It is now July 2021. I took a break from writing about my emotions and this is what I realized…
Writing poetry has been my way of exploring my emotions, thoughts, and perspectives. I don’t think I am alone in that, in fact, I think that is one thing that every poet has in common. Beyond writing poetry, I really don’t take the time to think about why I feel — well — what I feel.
When I would sit down and decide that it was time to unpack the why’s of my feelings, I would just try to think about the events in my life that made me feel the most. I wanted to write about the intense feelings that screamed louder than the rest, and the moments that caused them.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with that, but I think it’s also important to remember the smaller emotions and moments that happen in day to day life. The things that often get overlooked are oftentimes the things that me feel the most alive. Simple things like going for a drive in the mountains with my husband with the radio on singing our favorite songs are my favorite.
But I think I would skip writing a poem about it because I would think that it was too cliché and there was nothing profound about this activity that brought me so much joy.
I didn’t think I could bring anything new to the smaller things that bring so much fulfillment. But here’s the thing. I now realize that not every poem needs to be about the highest highs and lowest lows of life. And not every poem needs to offer some sort of enlightenment or understanding about why these things are important. Sometimes the answer is that it just is and that’s okay. Not everything in life has a rhyme and reason but that doesn’t mean I can’t write and rhyme about it if it moves me.
While I was on a hiatus from writing poetry, I was not on a hiatus from reading it. I took some time to reflect on poems that I had written that were published here on Medium and also those that I have decided to keep to myself.
Ultimately, I found that a large majority of my poems focused on more negative events that happened in my life. I thought it was interesting because as I mentioned before, I tried to write poems centered around emotions/feelings that seemed to scream the loudest.
It made sense that grief and depression were subjects of my poems, but there were only a handful that focused on the smaller (or any) joys. I find that in my life I am happy almost every day (a position that I do recognize as a privilege) but if someone were to only get to know me by reading my poems, it could come off as someone in a darker, sadder, or more bitter time of their life.
The entire collection of poems that I liked to think of as “pieces of me” were not representative of my life or who I am. I was focusing on the more dramatic pieces because the “ordinary” things about my life that I loved didn’t seem poem-worthy. I can only describe the situation I found myself in as an identity crisis. I felt that I was masquerading as someone that I am not — or rather — someone that I used to be. I was refusing to show who I have become after growing from traumatic events.
So from now on I choose to be more honest. I choose to represent every side of me through my poems. I choose to write about the mundane. I choose to write about the everyday joys that I never deemed worthy before. I choose to be open.
I challenge you to do the same if you have ever found yourself in this situation. I challenge you to write about what seems difficult to put into words. I challenge you to write about the things in life that do not seem worthy of a poem, article, or whatever form you choose to write in. I challenge you to express every side of you without censorship.
