Unwritten

“A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity,” said Franz Kafka.

There is nothing under the sun I love more than writing. There is nothing more I want to do with my life.

I see a particularly pretty evening sky as I cross the road to get to my boarding place, and I want to write about it. I point at the crescent moon, and I want to write about it. Then I see it in its full glory, shining overhead and I tell myself I’ll write about it.

I sit and stare at a star, blinking on me and I want to write about it. I’m told it’s planet Venus. I notice how sunlight hits a blooming tree and cast shadows on asphalt. A dino-shaped cloud on a clear blue sky. How quickly sun set over the sea this February.

Everything is a story for a fleeting second.

I’m overcome by the hunger to write like my sorry life depends on it.  I want to write till the nail of my index finger bites into itself from gripping the pen. I want to write the way one would bleed, painfully and with no restraints, all over blank pages.

Then I see people.

Living breathing story books and I want to read as much as I can. Some written in tongues I’d never understand, some in languages close to mine but never my own. I flip through most, just enough to get the gist of what they are about. Some I read so obsessively that I dissect each word and the spaces between them.  They stay with me, all the people I’ve read.

I pull them out from where they have collected dust in attic of my mind as I sit alone with nothing to save me from my thoughts. I think about a girl I picked a fight with in second grade and wonder where she is now. A random stranger who gave up a seat for me in a crowded Pizza Hut. Last time I saw grandma before she passed. The group of friends from O/L class I played monopoly with. I tell myself that I’d write about it all before I die. So that way they would live on after I do.

Yet, I don’t write.

I watch as all stories rot under my fingernails simply because there’s nothing a writer fears more than being read. The fear of judgment has trampled on more tales than failure ever could. I spend each day in crippling fear that I would accidentally write something someone would read. And in doing so, know me more than I would like them to.

I can’t name a greater terror than being wrongly perceived through something I worked so hard to express myself with.

I want to write. Yet, I don’t.

Perhaps true passion is not what you do most vigorously. It’s neither what excites you the most nor what is most gratifying. Maybe it’s the thing that scares you the most, but you just can’t give up on.

I tell myself I will write one day.