An Apology to Writing

Dear,

I've come to realise day in day out that I've been unfair to myself, that I've completely abandoned everything I loved and surrendered to the daily stresses of life. I have been waking up every day with the exact same thoughts, "I want to live this day," and nothing more than that. I've been living my days for the sake of existence not for anything else. And I've missed writing.

I've had a fair share of stresses to come back to writing, that one thing that always forgives me for my absence and disappearance, and for my lack of will. I've walked down the streets and looked people in the eye without having any stories to extract, without feeling any depths they have or any hidden messages they tried to tell me, messages that God Himself tried to send me. And that's how I lived. I just existed. I breathed and I laughed and I cried without feeling the least bit of exhilaration for what I had that not many had. I've lost myself. And I need to know how to get it back. So I chose to write. My only refuge. My only way out of myself and to myself, was to write.

I've abandoned everything I loved, literally, everything, except for him. I just don't know how to go back. I have a constant urge to save myself from something really bad that's going to happen, but I don't know what it is. I'm just scared, and I've spent the last few months scared more than I've ever been scared my entire life.

2016 was the best and the worst year for me. The best because I met him. The worst because I've never cried that much to the point where I felt I was literally losing myself. I felt myself slip away. I felt my soul slowly going into a coma, or a sort of numbness I cannot even explain. Sometimes I thought it was depression, other times I thought it was just a phase, but mostly, I felt it a terrible failure to adapt. I said it to him. I told him all. I told him everything and I've literally cried in his arms and held so tight I was scared to let go because I was afraid of myself and of what I'd be capable of doing at such moments. He was my only comfort, still is, and I have God to thank for sending me someone so amazing at such times. I can never be grateful enough.

I miss words, I miss writing, and I miss the smell of books in my arms and between my fingers. I miss the touch of the papers and the papercuts I got when I excitedly turned on the pages of a really good book I was reading. I miss the feeling that brain-wrecking quotes gave me, and the "a-ha" moments an author offered me, an offering that I'm not alone, and that I'm not crazy either. I wish that, whatever happens in life, words stay to be my refuge, and that even if I can hardly utter a word, I will still be able to write the words I cannot speak. I pray that I never be deprived of the magical feeling that words gave me. I miss feeling the struggles of a writer. 

Abandoning the things we love has always been a mistake we all make. The things that make us happy, the things that make us feel alive; this is a terrible way for handling life. We think we can survive but it's these things that help us survive in the first place. It's the things that we think are not important, are themselves the most important things we need to never give up or give up on.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'll say it for the rest of my life, until I can go back to some of the things that made me feel alive. Until then, I'm only breathing.

Yours faithfully and sincerely,

N.