Writing Through the Fire

I had to write my way through countless dark days. I wrote my way through days of heartbreak, heartache and despair. It was like sitting in a canoe on a dirty lake and trying to paddle through it alone. It was exhausting…

Although, instead of a dirty lake, I was in my own room. And instead of being in a canoe I was sitting on my own bed. My canoe was my journal that sat in my lap most days and my paddle was my pen. I wrote my way through storms of tears, fits of rage, and days where all I wanted to do was sit in my muddy emotions. My fingers would be covered in pen ink and my mind was sticky with egoistic thoughts. Heart and soul were flooded with tears and layered with cobwebs.

Some people are too afraid to trudge through their messy emotions. Some people think they know how to find the answers they so desperately crave or that they have the answers on how to do life already. This will eventually cause a problem. One small stub of the toe or word said from an outside source will cause a catastrophic reaction. Life as they know it will blow up in their face. Hearts will break, bodies will ache, minds will churn and everything will implode.

It is important that we take the reins of our lives humbly but firmly. If we do not acknowledge all of who we are, including the dark parts-the parts of ourselves that are not perfect, that parts of ourselves that perhaps aren’t as strong, the parts of ourselves that will be the reason self-improvement will always be needed and growth inevitable-then we will always be blindly coasting through life. We will always get stuck in our egoistic thoughts, find ourselves in a storm of tears, wondering why our bodies hurt and why there are so many cobwebs around.

From a young age I saw and felt this from those around me. Some of this was from those I knew and some from strangers. From a young age there was a small, but fiery voice that was inside me. It lay somewhere between my heart and my soul. Everyday I felt it. Many days I heard its fiery call, “You. You must not coast. Humans only fade because they let themselves coast through the world.”

This fiery voice soon started to sound like my voice because it became my deep desire, “I don’t want to coast! I don’t want end up like them. I will not coast. A plane can coast through the sky. A boat can coast through the water. A rock can coast along a trail in the woods from a gentle, absent-minded kick, but I will not coast.”

And so I wrote. Little did I know how writing would save my life and become my life at the same time. Writing is a way to paddle through the muddy waters of that which we do not understand and find a way to make it make sense. Even if just for a little while, it will make sense. Writing can be a way to dissect and zoom into the parts of the human condition that make it so beautifully complex. Writing can be a way to relate to the world without having to live the same experiences. Writing was how I did all of that and paddled my way to understanding Divine Intuition. And then that small, fiery voice came back to me. It came back with more fire.

And now I feel like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego sitting in the fiery furnace unafraid of the fire that lives inside me because Divine Intuition put it there. She sits with me in the fire.