Let Go and Love it!

I’m like a big population of people that suffer from depression. There’s so many of us. I don’t know how depression stated its case in your life, but in mine, it came by way of a writing assignment. In class one day, the teacher told us to take out some pen and paper and just write. Me, being defiant as I’m known to be, sat there and folded my arms across my chest and looked around the room while everybody else did what she said. To me it was stupid. Because who just writes with nothing to say? How you just gonna tell us to write, but not tell us what to write? Told her I wasn’t doing it when she came over because I didn’t see what kind of sense it made. She insisted. She said something about how she’s not looking for anything in particular she just wants us to write whatever comes to mind. So, now I’m pissed because she’s trying to make me do something that I don’t wanna do. I asked her, “Are we turning this in? Is it an assignment?”

When she told me yeah, I was ready. Not because I was scared she would give me a low grade, but because now I could tell her on paper, how damn stupid she was, using her own invitation to do so.

But that shit backfired. The joke was on me.

Because when I started to write on paper how stupid the assignment was, and how I hate when people are on power trips and feel like just because they have the power to make you do something, they use that power. I was reading this lady for filth with each stroke of my pen. But the more I wrote, the more I realized that I was talking about my stepfather. Her approach had pissed me off. But her assignment woke me up. Somewhere around half a page, I started to cry. Hysterical crying to where I had to leave class. I had just emptied my soul off a trigger and didn’t know it.

Didn’t know I had a trigger . . . until that day.

Writing does so much, but is so overlooked as the powerful tool that it is.  Yeah, I write books and create worlds and people in those worlds. But when i want to write pieces of my world, that are too big, too private, for an audience, I turn to free-writing. Everybody should . . .

Want to feel the weight on your shoulders get lighter? Free-write. Get a piece of paper and just write. Start it however you want. The weather, your mood, your hair! The color of your shoes! Don’t worry about it making sense at first. Because when you first begin writing, your guards are up and you’re going for surface material. Let that happen. But soon after, another part of you will take over the writing lesson. Just write. Write like you’ve only been given a minute to do it.

Don’t stop to think or you’re defeating the purpose. Just write. Because in that moment it’s not you that’s writing, it’s the cries of your mind . . . your heart . . . your soul . . . your 12-year-old self!

Let those emotions bleed onto the paper, unapologetically. Release, shed, reset.

I promise you, your self will love you.