I'm still alive (why I even write)

I know, its been quite a while since I have written anything here. It is not because I have nothing to say or that I do not feel like writing. On the contrary I write nearly every day. It has been a means of escape for me for more than a few years.

I started to keep a journal at the suggestion of the family pastor when I was age fourteen. I found myself visiting him once a week, for the lack of any other means of "therapy" for a young man going through the harrowing trials of adolescence. On the evening before I would meet with the pastor at the church I would spend around thirty minutes or so catching up on the events of the week. I hated doing it. It felt like home work. And not even homework I "had" to do. There were no grades to be had, no benefit I could see from it.

Each week I would write in this notebook he gave me, and I never failed to bring it with me when I would visit with him. After a month of doing this it dawned on me that he never once asked to look at this book. Never even asked me to read from it. He would simply ask if I had done any writing this week or not. Still, I would perform this seemingly pointless exercise for another month before I finally asked him what the reason behind it was. Why was he not interested in what I had to say in my notebook each week? Why bother to ask me to do this? His answer was simple. "What you write in that journal is none of my business unless you choose to share it with me." I must have looked as confused as I had felt right then because he proceeded to explain to me that the writing exercise was simply a means for me to focus on something other than those issues I felt were worth worrying about each day.

Later that evening I had started to read through some of the pages I had filled over the last two months and I began to see a pattern. Nearly everything I wrote was negative. I wrote in this book not to remember the things I felt were wrong in life, but to forget about them and it worked. Suddenly it made a lot of sense.

I only went back to visit the pastor two more times. To this day I can not remember his name or much of anything else about him except the fact that he had a stutter and that he showed me that writing was a great way to escape each day.

Now I write for pleasure, to remember, to understand. To share with anyone willing to read it long after I have gone, since there is only a little I am willing to share at the moment. I write to escape, and to organize my thoughts. Every so often I contradict what I had written previously. I ask myself the same questions I have answered so many times before. And every so often the answers are different. This simply shows that I am growing. Maybe even learning.

 I may not be great at writing, I know my talents can be found in other areas, but I still love to do it and I see no reason to stop. Maybe someday I will even decide to share some of it with the world.

Maybe