Spirited…

Nostalgia

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

– Ernest Hemingway

A familiar pressure has been building in my chest for some time now. It is a tingling feeling. Faint, but enough substance for my mind to notice this sensation. It is the feeling of my heart knocking at the doorstep of my mind, where it is the central decision-maker of my being, requesting to be taken back to a place where there was an escape from all forms of stress, sadness, and anger.

You see, back then… I had nothing. At a physical sense, I had nothing. But for the lack of materialistic things, it made up for a creative mind of mines. I sat and pondered on life and observed things only a precarious child will do. I questioned the inevitability of death, the mystery of life, and hoped to stumble upon a kind of love only Jane Austen can dream of writing. And because I had nothing, I made the best of what little thing was around… and those were my mothers’ books. From the Harlequin novels, to the autobiographies, and to the thrillers – my mother’s beloved books, where pages have yellowed, dog’s-eared and fallen apart, was my first spirited serendipity. It was when I fell in love with the written word, a love-affair spanning 17 years of my life. 

I fell in love with books so much I taught myself to speak English. I made a dedication to eliminate most, if not all, of the language barrier when I stepped foot on American soil. It meant writing every single word I didn’t know the meaning of or how to speak and listening to the phonetics over and over again until I could practically taste it in my mouth; a manifestation of my obsession to perfecting this delectable language. I did it so often I finally gathered courage to speak them out loud and dared people to look me in the eye and tell me I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about.  As time went on, reading so much, learning words and its beautiful forms, prompted me to dabble with writing and in turn, fell in love with that as well. My second spirited serendipity.

Reading and writing helped my mind cultivate a healthy outlet from other influences around me. It helped me find a stable sanctuary when my very household was nowhere near it. Reading and writing, my first loves, were the things that helped me discover a sneak peek of what I would become. Wanted to become. My third spirited serendipity.

Now fast forward to six years and I’ve lost my way. I am working in a completely opposite field of what I have envisioned to be in. I dread at the absolute thought of sitting in front of a computer or a pen and paper, to write the minute details of what I felt, thought, and cared for like I used to. I no longer had time to read and exercise my mind to think differently and outrageously. I have been working like a maniac abusing my body, mind and soul to meet deadlines, run meetings, surmise reasonable solutions to never-ending problems, answer to a thankless group of board of directors, and running around like a hamster on a wheel in this vicious cycle of Corporate America. I have lost the care-free spirit who once thought life was summed in the beauty of cherishing moments. I have lost the integral part of my inner peace – the passion to provoke my senses and thoughts by the written word and writing one of my own.

So here I am, listening to my heart’s knock, a nostalgic gesture of my spirit who has been hibernating within me. I long to find another spirited serendipity – to escape from reality in a sense and creating one of my own. After all – we are the pilots of our lives. We can’t blame anyone else for whatever situation we’re in. We can only take responsibility for ourselves. If it means I have to consciously make an effort to write and/or read something – I will do it. I will dredge up enough stress away from myself and find the true bliss I had discovered long ago, but now misplaced somewhere within the fort of my mind.

Let’s begin…

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”