Silent Friend

The most important thing to a writer isn’t the paper or how she thinks or what she thinks about, it’s her pen, because without it she would have nothing to write with. Yes you can express your self in other ways, but what’s better than being able to write?

I was bad at writing; I tried to make the poems rhyme and all that more “normal” stuff poems do. It wasn’t until later that I found out that I was the one holding the pen that I could change the way I wrote my poems. At first it was hard, and then it got easier as I went along. I just held the pen over a blank piece of paper and everything I felt: anger, resentment, affection, and love, poured out onto the paper. I wrote poems about little things like a piece of paper rolling around on the cement and about the more serious things that affected me. There are three sides of the pen.

One side was that it was a vent, if someone was aggravating me or if I just felt like crying I wrote a poem, one after another. I loved the freedom of being to write, of being able to cry without really doing it. It was the next best thing to having a good friend to whom I could tell everything. I wrote down all my worries, anger and just everything I was feeling bad about, and felt good later. It didn’t go away but writing and putting it down on paper was like saying, “okay, now I have control over my feelings, now I can control what’s wrong.” It gave me a sense of control over what I wrote and how I wrote it, and who I allowed to read it.

The other side, the darker side, of my pen was that I used it almost like my weapon. How? I might have ruined someone’s reputation by writing something I hadn’t intended to let anyone else but I see. Well, let’s just say I didn’t do it on purpose. I also sometimes use my “weapon” on my family too. Let’s face it; parents are always nosy about what’s going on in their kids’ minds. Yes, I know they care and for good reason, but the least they could do is respect my privacy. I mean there are reasons I don’t want them to read the poems I write; I don’t want them to tease me, or worry, or anything like that, I don’t like it when they do that (to tell you the truth, I hate it).

Now the third side, the nicer side was for those few people I cared about and who mattered to me most. I wrote poems for and about them, funny ones when I wanted to cheer them up or just to see them laugh, and sad ones when something bad happened or when I just wanted to say “I love you”. I also wrote poems, the more secret ones, and showed them. I don’t even think they are aware that I let them see a part of me my family hardly sees, if ever. My pen was what connected me to them, what showed them how much I cared for and cherished them.

My relationship with my pen is weird. It lets me communicate with people without feeling embarrassed or judged. I use it all kinds of ways, I can hurt people with it, I can flatter them, or I show them that I love them through a small poem or a letter. I don’t write as many poems now, I’ve met so many wonderful people, people I can trust and who trust me that I hardly ever feel the need to write anymore. But once in a while I’ll feel it, the desire to write just one more poem.