Waiting

I write because I must. It's a like a little itchy something in my brain. A compulsion, perhaps.

I've been writing since a child. Poems that no one will ever see. Journaling, something that I hope my kids will look at when they have grandkids someday.

And fiction. I knew when I was in junior high that I could write well or at least had the potential.

I never pursued it because drama and theatre took hold of me. But I still wrote in the quiet watches of my teen angst.

I gave it up when I married a writer who was abusive. I was abusive too in my own way; at least, I didn't help matters by my loyalty to him. I had to give up everything, friends and writing to be with him.

But after the divorce I went back to it. Here and there, on bits of paper or notebooks. Little scribble scrabbles of my imagination and pain translated into words.

Years went by and here I am.

I went to a conference and learned a lot from the last session that I attended. The woman talked about writing and how not everyone there was meant to be a writer. And that's ok. That some are meant to write for themselves and that it is enough just to do that. That God is satisfied with "only" that.

It hurt me, this conference, because I was not ready or prepared or ready. I have so much to learn.

And I don't know that this is my calling because I'm guessing that I would not be so alone in all this. Perhaps I'm wrong because in the end, the act of writing is to be alone, physically at least.

Where does God figure into all this? That's the thing. I don't know.