The Epiphany

The other day, I had and epiphany, a heart crushing epiphany that caused the floodgates of my soul to burst wide open and a river of tears flowed uncontrollably. 

I was listening to my favorite rocker Chick of my youth, after years of not listening to her soulful voice and honest, open - even cheesy at times - lyrics and I asked myself why I don't write like she does. I call myself a writer, right? My heart crushing epiphany, the sudden realization hit so swiftly and left me to pick up the pieces of my broken heart and crushed dreams.

I'm not a writer. I never was.

And so I sat and cried - as I have every day since - and my husband looked at me with fear and confusion in his eyes.

Yes, I loved to write and wrote some cute stories, but I wasn't good at it. I could have been good at it if I had stuck with it, but I didn't. I quit. I gave up. So how dare I call myself something that is so beautiful, so artistic, when I gave up. 

I can't even blame the man who tore up all my journals and notebooks full of my deepest, most intimate thoughts and left the little gray and white pieces lying all over the floor for me to clean up. Pieces of my heart and dreams scattered all over the living room and hall of that shit trailer we called a home. True, I was never the same after that and never looked at writing the same again: always afraid of the cruel invasion of my mind by someone claiming to love me, only to use all those words against me in the most manipulative and intimate of ways.

But it was my fault. My fault for allowing such as person to come close enough to destroy a huge piece of who I was. And as soon as he destroyed every other hope and dream I had and left me alone with my dark and tortured soul, I should have picked myself up and carried on with the one true thing that never really left me: the words and stories and characters that are inside me, as real to me as my children are.

Those characters, those words, those thoughts are still inside me, demanding to be put on paper. They consume my thoughts and now my dreams, screaming loudly in my own head, and they won't let me rest; as persistent to get what they want as my 9 year old, begging for a package of balloons at the grocery store. I want to breath every painful thought and memory I have into one of those balloons and release those demons into the dark night sky and forever forget.

But I can't.

The only way for me to move on now is to tell the stories that I've left simmering inside me. Those characters are getting hot and pissed now, screaming at me:

"Just write, Tonya! FUCK! Stop making excuses. You ARE a writer and only YOU can write our story! Just Fucking write. NOW!"

And so now I write.

Thank God for that epiphany.