Sharing My Voice: Why I (Try To) Write
Image credits: @kylejglenn
Writing has excited me since before I was even in 3rd grade. Some of the earliest pieces I remember writing are a short story on waking up to find a hippo lounging in my bathtub, and a poem I had proudly called "I Wonder Why". My parents were my biggest cheerleaders, and over time, a number of teachers followed suit. I enjoyed writing, and people around me enjoyed my writing; the excitement of finishing up a piece and running to share it with someone around me only grew as I did. But then, as I started prepping for my A levels (that's a junior year at high school for you North Americans), I just stopped writing.
I'd heard people say high school intensifies the effort you need to put into school work, and that was what I told those who'd ask me if I'd been writing at all recently. Lack of time was something everyone seemed to understand and accept, so I took the easy way out and ran with it. In reality, I had no idea why I couldn't write anymore. I would sit at my desk and stare at a sheet of paper (or a Word doc on an ancient laptop that ran on Windows XP), reaching around my head for something, anything. But I would always turn up blank. It was like someone wiped my mind clean as soon as they sensed me reaching in.
Of course, it makes sense now that I have my laundry list of diagnoses - this is what anxiety and depression do. But at the time, I thought I had lost it. Years went by, I took a gap year, went to university, and engaged myself in a whole lot of other things. I was actively working with student organizations geared towards mental health advocacy and social justice, while working to keep up with school work. And somewhere along this line, I began to notice something. Things in the world were making me angry again. Not the sadness or despair that I had made my peace with, but anger.
But that wasn't it - I was also feeling lighter, less foggy and more able to see nuance in the constructs that I would discuss. Though the directionality of this association will likely always remain unclear, I like to believe it was the clarity that brought up the anger. And suddenly I was able to write again. Hell, I wanted to write again.
And the more I reflected on the world around me, the more clarity emerged, driving me to pen it down. I (very warily) experimented with sharing these pieces with a close circle of friends and family, and the feedback I got was overwhelming. Not all "wow this is so well written" (although those did contribute to my motivation, I won't lie), but I was receiving long essay-messages of their thoughts on the subject. It was growing into a communal conversation.
My style of writing began to change somewhat dramatically, but I didn't mind. It's hardly a price to pay when at the other end stands the chance to encourage and drive important conversations that are unfortunately not very easy to come by. What had restarted as an attempt to vent out my feelings and untangle messy thoughts was growing into something meaningful for more people than just me. Marshall McLuhan famously said "the medium is the message" but I've found that the medium for me is a gateway opportunity. One that leads me to so much more than what I had thought I'd get out of it. And I couldn't be more excited to see what the future holds for it.
If you made it this far and wonder what this writing actually is, go check out my page on Medium: sahana-babu.medium.com
