I write, therefore I am

I am a writer. I don’t mean that as a profession, but as something that describes me as a person. It is not only something that I do, that I maybe have some talent for, or that makes me successful. No. Being a writer is who I am, to my cote, it is part of my very being. I am verbose, I love words and languages, and I love reading to get inspired, to get my own creativity flowing. I don’t think calling yourself a writer needs to mean that you are good at it, or that you need to believe that you are good at it. As a matter of fact, most writers often go through periods where they feel they are imposters, pretending to be good at what they do. And I do feel that way a lot of times too. But I don’t care if I am good or not, or if others think I am. I write because it is one of the few things I am sure about, one of the few things that no one can take away from me. I write, therefore I am.

There is no doubt that I would fit most of the stereotypes of a writer. There is the isolation and the madness. I drink too much coffee and I suffer from insomnia. I can spend nights writing, while other days I stare at a blank document and the words are stuck inside me. Observing others, I imagine their life stories. I am opinionated, I don’t really fit in and you could call me an activist in many ways. The kind of company I would love to be in are the outcasts, the ones that defy society’s norms, the ones that are edgy. But just because I fit the stereotypes, doesn’t mean that I am a writer. I am a writer because I feel like one. It is who I am. Writing is what I do.

Reading and Writing

My love for reading started very early in my life. I learnt to read at about four years old, my grandfather taught me. And ever since then, I devoured books, articles, poetry, anything that consisted of words. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of me reading. Sitting under a tree in the forest close to my home, my bike on the ground, a book in my hands. I started writing a diary when I was six years old. That’s a tradition that I have kept up with almost all of my life, sometimes more regularly, sometimes there is an entry every couple of months.

When I was a kid, I wrote a lot of poetry, and as a teen I won competitions with my poems and my short stories. At that point i wanted to become a journalist. I remember my uncle giving me a book on how to get work in journalism. At that time I also picked up a hobby that I still very much indulge in: letter writing. I use pen and paper every day, writing to people all over the world, page after page. It is so much easier to express myself in the written word to someone on the other side of the world, than to socialize with someone in my town.

Currently, I am working on a novel. I have already written two novels, I just never had the guts to actually allow anyone to read them. Everything I studied at university had in one way or another to do with literature. I have degrees in cultural studies, history and literary studies. I had at one point decided that writing about books might be more my thing than actually creating something myself. But still, I was a writer. The number of papers and articles I have created in an academic context very much reflects that.

The Process of Writing

There are different processes involved depending on what I write. Poetry is a spur of the moment thing. It just comes to me and I have to get it out. I write a poem in five minutes and then I am done with it. I don’t want to change anything about it. Short stories and such, I have an idea about and then I work out the whole story in my head, before even starting to write down or type a single word. This can sometimes be tedious, because I know what will happen, how it will end, and writing it out can almost seem boring. Articles and posts like this, I already have structured on my mind before I start writing them. I don’t necessarily know what exactly I am going to say, but I am aware of the flow of things already before my fingers touch the keyboard.

You know how everyone is always looking for the meaning of their life? While I struggle with a lot of things and I often don’t understand why I should keep going, I very much know what the meaning of my life is. I am very certain of what I want to do with my life, and I have always known. And no, it has nothing to do with the number 42! The meaning of my life, what fulfills me, what I can contribute with to the world, is making people think.

I want people to read something that I have written and think, reflect and maybe adjust the way they look at the world. I don’t want to push my opinions on people, and I don’t want them to agree with me. It is about poking their minds, make them more woke, more aware. And that could be related to so many things!

So why blog?

Here, on this blog, it is definitely related to sex positivity, kink, mental health, relationships and body image. In other spaces, it has been about other things. In my post on authenticity and blogging, I discussed what my goal with this blog is and why sexblogging seems to be the right kind of niche for me. Having a blog gives you the opportunity to be read, and to do so as anonymously as possible too, which takes some of the pressures of. But the overall reason for me to write on this blog is that I want to make people think, to reflect upon their lives, upon their desires and needs.

And not in a devilish Lucifer Morningstar-way, as in: “Tell me, what is it you truly desire?”. Instead I want to tickle people’s minds with my erotica, my reflections and honesty. I just sometimes wish I could observe the thoughts and feelings that my writing evoke. Because I am a writer. All I have is my words. All I am sure of in this world is that I write. I write, therefore I am.

I leave you with a poem I have written a while ago. It is not sexy, but it is one of my favourite creations.

Smash my mental teeth in, kick my mouth with boots
Carve your names into my bones
Scratch my eyes until I am blind
Like all those fathers that have done so before.

Rape my veins, smother them and then tear them apart
Play the keyboard on my emotions
Then shoot them down, into a million pieces
Like all those lovers that have done so before.

Piss in every room in my mind and stain it with your stink
Spit onto my thoughts and drain them
Choke the breath out of my body
Like all those friends that have done so before.

Cut me into pieces and never put me back together
Beat me into a pulp of bloody bliss
Degrade me, hate me, ignore me
Like my brain has done to myself so many times before.

Choose me as your canvas for destruction and be creative
Slice me like bread and put salt into the wounds
Kill my mind, command the tar take over and the fog forever disintegrate who I am
Do it, I dare you.