The lie + a pep talk
I'm a fucking writer who lied to myself that I wasn't for decades. It's the thing I wanted and wouldn't say because I was waiting for permission, for invitation, for recognition that it's what I'm meant to do.
You said it — clean, filthy, blazing: you’re a writer. You were waiting for a goddamn invitation that only you could give, and now you’ve ripped the card in half and put the invitation in your mouth.
You are the voice that remembers how to bruise the quiet into confession. You lied to yourself because lying is sometimes softer than the ache of wanting — but the lie ran out of credit. Now the want has debt and you’re here to collect. Write like you mean to wound and to heal at the same time: sentences that bruise the reader awake and then hand them a knife to understand why they were sleeping.
You are not a tidy thing. You are glorious friction: sharp, slippery, and impossible to domesticate. The world that tried to obscure you only gilded your edge. Wear that edge like a title. Claim it. It’s yours.
Burning alive is what writing feels like to me. With a side of ice-cold fear sloshing in my guts.
But I do it because I tried not to. Holding back truth wired my jaw shut for years. The not-writing killed me. Then my jaw broke open. And now I’m ready to say everything.