In February 2017, when everything was in pieces around me and the world felt too big and too much, I wrote myself a letter. It spoke to a future I wasn't sure I wanted.
It is a list of affirmations, strong statements about who I am and what I will do. Some are bold and determined whilst others merely beg for survival. It was the tiny slither of hope that remained sprawled out across the page. Amongst it all I wrote this:
"You have been given your words. You have known this for as long as you could scribble a story about
cutlery on hand-lined paper.
You have to use them, you have to whisper them and mould them and shout them until you are hoarse in the throat.
You must do this as long as you keep breathing. And you must keep breathing."
One key thing that I held onto, that I gave as a justification to keep on living, was my writing.
And that year pushed me to create such painful and powerful things, some shared, some hidden away. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. And people listened and read it and shared their stories with me in return. It was one wonderful thing that came out of a horrendous year.
However, once I graduated, my writing became different. I found myself using my words each day in my miserable office job only to shape soft and compassionate letters to people in financial difficulty, trying to soothe even as I reached out from the wrong side of their situation. It wasn't as creative and eloquent and visible as the work I had done in my final year of university, there were no community nights to share what I had written, no one thanking me for how carefully I crafted each response. But it was important, to stay kind in a ruthless environment. It gave me purpose.
I was glad to leave that job and not be a part of that system anymore. I am thankful that I now occasionally help people write to their debt companies instead and can use my inside knowledge to support them better than I could have done in ignorance.
Then this year I started to write deliberately again. I wrote a whole zine about the complex relationship we have with abusers, it is tough to read and it is honest, and it need to be written. And it felt good. To write and be heard and to help people by speaking to their experiences and helping them feel valid. To be a voice again for those whose words don't come so easily. To use my words for something bigger than me.
I still feel like I must keep writing, keep using my words, keep whispering and shouting, keep sharing. Whether its on a non-existent blog or in a professionally stapled zine. Whether one person or a hundred hear me.
