Getting the words out

Photo by Thomas Martinsen on Unsplash

I need a blog post.

I need to write.

I have ideas in my head, scribbled down on what is to hand when the thoughts occur. Yet I am stuck. Again. The words are there, I can feel them. Thrumming away under my skin in a need-to-get-out-but-I-don’t-know-how kinda way.

Where does this come from? This need to write. I suppose words on paper, on screen, have always been my way of communicating.

Ask me to speak to someone and words flee from me like I have asked them to face their worst fears. I stutter, stumble over my words. Spending my time in my head overthinking every word I say. Wondering why I cannot be more interesting, more funny, more full of words.

Written down though it feels like my words come alive. Like I can actually get out the me that lives inside. The one that needs to speak. The one that usually hides because it is too shy, too scared, too doubtful.

It is the one thing that I have always felt I can do. That deep down I know I am good at even if the doubter in me sometimes disagrees.

I am always telling people with mental health issues to talk to someone, to share what they are going through. Yet I know how difficult this feels to do. I know that feeling far too well. The fear of what the reaction might be, the worry that you will lay yourself bare only to be let down or rejected, the knowledge that no one can fix you. The impossibility of putting it into words.

This is only part of what stops me talking to others. I find when I try to speak about how I feel that the words simply don’t come out right. That what I say fails time and time. That I can’t get out of me what it really feels like to be me. That I end either saying nothing or only scratch the surface. Passing off how I am really feeling as something much more superficial.

I can’t do that with writing.

I have to be honest. I type without pause, without censor. I am honest even if sometimes it feels brutal. I can ‘speak’ this way because no one is watching, I am not watching them. People can read or not read. They can respond if they want or they can ignore it and carry on as they were. I don’t feel the rejection and the words in the end always come out.