I write. I write because I do not know how to speak. Because the written word is never wrong. It is chosen. Most of the time, with absolute deliberation.
It does not slip out by mistake, by instinct, or out of superficiality. It takes its time before materialising. It has no volume to adjust, no particular accent, because it has no voice. Or rather, it takes on the sound of the person reading it. That is why it has billions of voices. It can be the voice that comes from the mouth, or the one that resonates within each of us, which is ultimately the voice of the soul. For this reason, its sound is inevitably familiar and intimate. It is always worthy of respect, because it is impossible to deny it or take it back; and for that very reason, it is eternal and noble.
I write for myself, because I have to. I could no more do without it than I could do without breathing or eating. And when I write, I love. I love everything about myself, above all my soul, which I purify and glorify.
But I do not write only for myself. I write for you too.For you, who carry the universe within you and do not know how to express it, even though you desire it more than anything else. You feel the urgency of it, I know. The same happens to me. But you cannot always find the right words for every emotion that passes through you and, even when you do, you do not have the strength, the desire, or the perseverance to write them down.
And yet—you know this too—when inspiration comes, it is like a river in flood that cannot be stopped. And so you let those words, unique and unrepeatable, drift away, scattering into the infinite cosmos of which you are made, believing that perhaps, one day, you might find them again.I am telling you: you never will.
The words that return will be different, perhaps even more beautiful, but they will never be the same.
I have that strength. I have that perseverance. And it is not always easy for me either. Sometimes it is even painful. But I am trained for it and, perhaps, I was born for this.
Destined for it.
That is why I write for you too.A
nd I confess that it gives me great satisfaction to know that, at least once, I may have succeeded in putting into words that thought of yours, that emotion that, for a moment, brushed against your heart and then escaped you, as a beautiful butterfly slips away from every flower.
If, through my words, I manage to bring back the magic of an emotion that, in that instant, belonged only to you, then tell me.I love what I write. I love it regardless. Not to love it would be like failing to appreciate the most divine of gifts: the soul and the mind.
But I am a human being among human beings, with my needs and my weaknesses. It is a little like a mother who loves her children and is proud of them, always and no matter what. And yet she cannot help but be pleased when others tell her too that she has done a good job, that she brought beautiful children into the world and raised them well, made them special.
So it is for a writer.In the end, writing is an act of love. It is giving oneself to another and receiving from another. It is hearing the echo of one’s own “I love you.” Because hearing those words in return is like receiving a caress upon the heart. The gentlest of caresses.
But put this way, writing might seem merely a pleasure, an indulgence.
In reality—as I have said—it is a necessity, like medicine that must be taken every day. It is therapeutic, like ranitidine in the morning.
Would you like an example?
“Enough! What is the point?”
I wrote those words on an ordinary sheet of paper, during one of those terrible days when nothing can lift me from the abyss into which I inexplicably fall.
“I have lost everything: my father, my dignity, my hope. I will be left alone, because there is no point in looking around: there is nothing but emptiness. Indifference and hypocrisy. Selfishness and falsehood. I only want to disappear into uselessness, into the nothingness of being. I no longer want to make an effort to fulfil myself or to be happy. Enough of these empty illusions! Good fortune comes on its own, when you least expect it. Perhaps when you do not even deserve it. A job, yes. That, I need. I have to. But without expectations, without effort, without goals or milestones to reach. Just a simple job that allows me to support my family, preferably something I know how to do and that fills my day, otherwise empty and useless. But without passion, without feeling, without drive. Extinguished. Just as my soul is extinguished.”
Then, with the sensation of someone who has finally expelled everything that had been stagnating in the stomach, lifted by invisible threads, I rose from the bed that had trapped me for hours, perhaps for whole days.
Nothing remained of that pain, that anguish, that sense of absolute abandonment.
I was there.
I was myself again, healed.
Life was calling me back, and I surrendered to it with trust, as though into a mother’s arms, and I began to write again.
Not only for myself, but for you too.
