What inspires me to write

A lot of people ask me about what inspires me to write and even more specifically, why do I write so much about love. They wouldn’t take “everything” as a response.

Have you ever been told that to be in love is the greatest privilege a human being can have? Have you ever been told that that to be in love is the greatest curse ever cast on a human soul? 

I am inspired by everything and whether that response is adequate or not it’s the truth. When I see a window pane I do not see my own reflection but the face of a man who would not accept my love and was not willing to love me. When I’m walking and see cracks in the sidewalk I can hear his voice saying, “Step on a crack you’ll break your mothers back!” Only to look up and have no one standing there. 

I will hear the voices of men I should have loved and men who slipped through my fingers in the background of different songs. I will hear a joke and think of those men and remember that he is nothing but a ghost now and a figment of my imagination. The world around me is not my own, not anymore.

I will have found my shame and regret at the bottom of a bottle of vodka and try to remember his phone number so I can call him and tell him that we can try one more time. Alcohol ends up proving to be poison because my memory never recovers his phone number but instead reminds me of how we ended up together and then also reminds me of why we broke up by morning.

So when you are reminded of love that should have but did not work out as much as I am, you would write too or else you would jump off a bridge.

I have written and cried as I typed, I have written drunk. I have drowned my words in misery. I write when the wound is fresh and just bleed out onto a page. It’s the only way.