Writer in the dark

By Megumi Jindo

Before I found writing, I was lost. After that, I was found.

i was always bad at talking—
always didn't seem to be able to communicate
the depth of my feelings to people

i couldn’t find a way to 
hide how i felt, escape how i lived,
until i found 
writing 

when i was trapped in my own head
and wanted to express myself,
writing was the only way out.

writing was the only source i could use
to say all the things i couldn’t—
how i actually felt.

writing was in one word:
my life
and 
somehow my therapist.

when i had stairway thoughts
at night
—dreams,
failures,
loss of love,
worries—
writing was there.

i would take out my pen and
notebook that i always kept by me
—because i seemed to write
every moment of my life—

and release my burdens into 
it
jotting down every sentiment
that came to my core—
dropping down into tears and
whirling memories
before they disappeared.

writing was
someone to listen—
my best friend.
all my disorders and
chaos,
my fleeting life,
my teenage depressions and growing up,
tipped into one world:
writing. 

it was also a place
to capture moments
of now
and be inspired and inspire.
a convention where i would meet
a different level of reality.

all the sensational parts of nature
became tangible:
the golden hours,
the moonlit night,
the springs of first dawn,
the sunsets and 
twilights,
the little sparkles of fairy lights
and wishes. 

the place where fears are let out,
the place where cries remain locked up,
the place where i become most vulnerable

simply,
writing is where i can put all of me
and all my words and let loose,
get rid of all the emotions i’ve kept inside me,
and 
write,
write,
write,
my heart out

because
to write, is to be free.

Process

This poem was originally written to submit to the Kenyon Young Writers’ Summer Online Workshop to the prompt: “write a 300-word statement, essay, story, or poem that illustrates why and/or how writing has been meaningful in your life (you may be as straightforward or creative with this prompt as you like).”

I immediately knew that I would write a poem, (because I love poems and they were the easiest way in which I could express myself) but the problem that stopped me was: how could I explain or illustrate how much writing meant to me?

Well, that was kind of a mess at first—I didn’t know what to write (like I did, but I didn’t know how to articulate it) and I didn’t know how I could translate how much writing meant to me. But while working on this application, I got sidetracked and actually came across, a Tate McRae YouTube interview about her song “Rubberband.” The response that she said to the interviewer on how much songwriting meant to her really resonated with me, and how much songwriting meant to her felt deeply relatable to what writing meant to me. We both felt that writing was an outlet to express ourselves and, drawing from that interview, I started to gain inspiration and began to write.

Afterward, I had written this three-page poem (and had to cut it down a bit to fit the required word count and had decided that the title would be named after Lorde’s song, “Writer In The Dark”) but as I was re-reading what I had written, I realized that I had somehow communicated exactly how I felt and that was it!

Writing was my way of transmitting my feelings and, ironically, writing had in this case, been the answer to my troubles (in how to emulate the significance of writing). From the poem, it dawned on me that whatever problems I had, writing would always be the answer because “to write, is to be free.” And since then, that phrase has become the solution and healing method for all things.