write my fear out

They said, write even if you don't feel like it. Write when you don't feel like it. Write what you feared the most.


So here I am, at the office, during lunch break, trying to face this demon that's been nagging me for the past week.


I love to write. I love to talk about things to myself and to the blank white pages in front of me, waiting there silently, unpretentious, yet demanding. I love how my brain seems to race with my fingers, digging deeper into the secluded corners of my heart, typing it all out and feeling the indescribable relief with every word that appears one by one on the screen. 


Yet writing is always hard for me.
The process of finding and digging into the secluded corner of the heart is painful. Gut wrenching, and sometimes, embarrassing. 


It's always hard to face and acknowledge your own anxiety, let alone to put in on paper. Inside the dark corners of your heart, they are all just feelings. And most of the time we see feelings as something that are not real. They're just, feelings. So it would be better to keep them in that dark corners. 


But once they're put on the paper, they become real. They become alive, because you acknowledge them, you recognize them, you admit that they're there. They are alive and breath out of your honesty. 


And, believe it or not, I find it scary. 


I think this is what makes writing is so hard for me.


It is scary to see how real and alive your feelings are. 


I can always write some other things. Things that will not become alive and point their fingers at me once they're on paper. Things that will only leave my brain and sit with their back on my face once they're on the paper. Things I wouldn't care so much, and wouldn't care so much about me either. Some other things, some other truths.


But they said you have to write what you feared the most. Otherwise you're not being honest.


Looking back, I realized that things I feared the most, are the things that are my truth. My true thoughts and feelings, that I'd never even had the courage to share even with myself. I wrote such things, and I remember that once I let those things out on paper, I feel relieved, yet so drained and embarrassed. A fear would grow, pounding in my chest shouting questions like could it be true? could it be right? what was going on all this time? what would you do?


It's painful. But I never give up on me. I dig deeper, search further, into the darkest corner of my mind and my heart, finding realities in the form of untouched feeling. Realities that are me. 


My latest attempt was two months ago. I started writing something I thought I wouldn't be able to face after it's done. It's something that has been occupying my mind for the past months. It has everything it needs to be impossible and forgotten right there and then for the sake of logic. I've reasoned with myself and failed. And I ended up writing about it. A dream that is too big that it scares me. 


But I wrote it anyway. I've started writing it two months ago and had completed almost 90 pages within a week. But then the more I write it, the more I'm scared. The more I feared of what have been put on paper. The more I feared of the feeling inside me. The more I feared the certainty of how one is never going to know one's self fully for the rest of one's life. What I wrote surprised me. How could it be that the thing you desire the most, scares you the most? I started to back down, and slowed down. But I forced myself to keep writing about it, even though I have to crawl from page to page, word by word.


I'm in pain. But I'm not done yet. Because I just have to write this. I just have to write this. I just have to see them there on papers, all the fears, all the dreams and desires that I'd never have the courage to touch before.


This time, I promise myself to dig even deeper. I'll write what I fear most out of the scariest feeling I have lurking inside of me. I'll call all the demons to come out and face me. I'll wake all the silent dreams to wake and stand on their feet and face me. I'll shake all the sadness and disappointment to come down and crashed themselves on the ground, die, or face me. I'll squeeze my heart until it can no longer bleed.


I'll keep on writing this thing I feared the most for the sake of being honest to myself. 


Something I haven't done for quite a long time.


Wish me the best of luck.




South Jakarta, 1.58 pm
Feeling the tight pressure on my chest