Tonight I'm gonna do a ramble about why I write the way I do. The origins behind what writing was and is to me. It will get long, I know, but I do hope someone reads it through and can see that there is, in fact, method to my madness. I hope someone reads through this and takes the time to look back at themselves and realize a long-lost dream. I hope it's an eye-opener. Anyway... let's proceed.
I'm taking another day to posting the remainder of my poems. As I've looked back on the reviews I've gotten, I notice how my macabre poems of death and fear seem to be my greatest hits. So this morning came my greatest dark poem to date, titled "Visionary." It's a very grotesque piece about a psychic girl suffering a horrifying vision in her sleep... inspired by a night terror I've actually experienced before. It, along with the rest of my poetry, should be up on my FictionPress account within the next day or so.
A friend and I were talking early this morning and I told him I thought I might wind up being the next Edgar Allan Poe, although I will never be as amazing as Poe ever was. Poe was a god amongst writers, and I love his work. Emily Dickinson is also an inspiration to my poetry love. Getting back on track, however, I've decided my forte seems to be in dark poems involving torment, mental anguish, insanity, and sorrow/rage.
As a child, I was extremely gifted in the art of speech and writing. (They wanted to have my IQ tested when I was all of 4, but my mother refused.) I spoke complete sentences around one; walked at nine months; taught myself to read at two... I knew my alphabet and how to count at two as well... the list goes on. As much as I like to act like I'm not, I'm intellectually advanced. I've just dumbed myself down tremendously over the years. (Knowing the dictionary definition for any word ever created isn't cool when you're 9.)
Originally, I wrote for school assignments... and my teachers ate my writings up. They always wanted me to read my short stories to the class and were moved by my poems when I was all of 9 and 10 years old. My poems came from my overactive imagination. It stemmed from my ADHD and the fact that I didn't quite fit in with everybody. My mind burst at the seams with ideas and pictures.
But as I matured, the source of my inspiration dwindled. I wrote because of my imagination and the "magic" that exists in childhood. I turned 10, and the world seemed to spiral down. For several years, I didn't write unless it was for school, and even then I dreaded it. It was as if the well had dried up. I tried my hand at drawing and art. My teachers never gave me anything higher than a C and always criticized me for being "unconventional."
Nobody likes to be told they're "not normal." At least, not when you struggle so hard to fit in and be liked.
Finally, I put away all my artistic dreams and let them roam my dreams instead, laying awake until odd hours of the morning imagining all the things I could've drawn or written. Back in the day, it was my simple pleasure. Today, it makes me feel sad for myself... it sounds so lonely and tragic. Stifling the creative passion and keeping it all within. Instead, I launched myself into video games and socializing.
Video games aren't real people; the socializing wound up leaving me harrassed daily and in the middle of one of the stupidest rumors in my middle school career. The teachers fell in love with my assignments. They asked me why I kept it all secluded, and I never bothered to realize what writing truly was to me. I simply called it "working on the assignment."
I never bothered to say it was a hobby; a longtime dream... a passion.
(Warning. We're getting into touchy territory now.)
I was thirteen when my grandmother left this world. I remember being called out of my classes to be told, "We have to go to Columbus, and we have to go now." It's as if it all happened yesterday... being whisked down the highways and seeing all my family gathering. I am the second oldest of four children. My older cousin was 17. I was 13. My younger cousin was 12, and my sister was 11. As the younger children were girls, they came to me. They came to me asking what was wrong. It was a young age for such a crisis. I comforted them and turned off every emotion I had in my body. I remember it all.
After the funeral, those ideas I had in my head slowly turned dark. Her loss caused me to suffer my first "night terror," in which I dreamt I was trapped in a casket, buried alive, hearing the mourners above sobbing for me but yet nobody could hear me say I was alive. ...It was symbolic for my grandmother's demise. I was in such strong denial. I swore they had buried her alive.
The dreams I had by night of plotlines slowly darkened. I dreamt that she was alive, only to turn to dust in my hands. I nearly lost my mind, having absolutely nowhere to go to vent my pain and sorrow. It was building and growing inside of my heart, so much that I nearly lost my own life. I was hurting and I didn't know how to make it go away.
Then one day, as we were going through her belongings, my mother found a letter I had written to her when I was 5. My grandmother... had locked it in her firebox. With shaking hands, I read my words. The second I saw, "I love you," I dropped the paper and sobbed until I couldn't anymore.
That night, I found the will to write again. I wrote an epic, four-page poem releasing all the anguish and hurt. When it was all said and done, I felt empty but so much better. In the most tragic way possible, the well of inspiration began to flow again, and I began to write with renewed vigor.
I use writing as a way to vent out the emotions I've kept buried and hidden. A lot of depressed energy pours into each piece that I create. I used a character named Daniel to reflect myself in written form. My poem "Smiling Misery" was the best depiction of not only him, but of myself. Sometimes to this day, he still shows up, although now I seem to channel myself more through Lucafira.
Most of my poems are very hard to decipher. Many have multiple meanings. My piece "The Red Day" is my best example of this. Not only is the title full of multiple meanings (Valentine's Day and the content within the poem); the entire piece held many meanings. It was a tragic love poem... but it was also a memorial to those lost in Virginia Tech. Also, the gunman was symbolic for all the troubles that tried to kill a relationship.
Another piece, "Losing Hope," was a multi-meaning piece. Not only was the title literal in meaning, it was figurative. The characters were named Chance, Hope, and Joy, which are emotions. Chance betrayed his love for Joy, and Joy betrayed him and ultimately caused him to lose Hope. If you read the sentence again, you see the emotional connection.
My poems are highly morbid, sad, miserable, and sometimes grotesque. It's an unconventional style for poetry. Poems are often depicted as happy pieces about love and happiness. And while happiness is an easy feeling to portray in poems, writing about insanity is often a lot more challenging. And people love to take a trip through someone's destroyed mentality. It's one of human nature's disgustingly tragic traits.
As a child, I ran from being "unconventional." I denied it and it hurt. But today, as a grown woman, I learn that unconventional is not as it used to be. I've been told that I'm destined to do something great. My dream in life is that maybe one day my writings will impact someone and inspire them to not hide their own creativity. My dream is to help someone understand and embrace their "abnormal" or "unconventional" ways and know they can go on to do great things.
It's taken me 20 years to learn this myself, and it's a wonderful feeling. And my dream now is that someone will benefit from it.
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