The Itch

I cannot tell you when I fell in love with words.

Whether it be when I was a child and the familiar stories told from golden-bound books poured into my imagination, or when I was a teenager and my diaries were filled with pages of angst and anger and a longing to find love and belonging. Or now, as an adult, when words can be the place that I feel most vulnerable and powerful but also whole.

I do not know when but I do know that if ignored, that itch, that need, eventually builds and bubbles up from inside of me until it's all I can do not to find my fingers on keys or pencil on paper until the words spill like ink, spreading across the page in a sudden flow.

Is this what it means to be a writer?

Or is the internal struggle to control the tongue, to force the unspoken into existence when the mind says "QUIET!" all too loud, are these words only a form of overflow? Like lava that cannot be contained a moment more, spewing from the deep only to wreak havoc, to carve a new way. Its beauty destructive and terrifying but also necessary.

I am home here. Safe.

This is love.