For most of my life, I’ve spent more time staring at a blank document than typing words on it. The pulsing cursor glares back at me from the screen, pleading for me to move it forward. I won’t say I hate writing; that would be not only an exaggeration but also a simplification of our complex relationship. I suppose the better explanation is that I have become fearful of my constant attempt to put my thoughts into a cohesive composition, and I end up hitting the backspace button a ridiculous number of times. Thus, the blank page doesn’t become my refuge—a place where I can express myself—but its emptiness echoes my insufficiency as a writer.
The idea of being “perfect” can be easily deconstructed, yet the concept of perfecting something remains attractive and somehow feels achievable. And so, I am swept away by the image of the perfect writer; someone who can lay it all out on the page without straining their mind or breaking a sweat, and who, with ease, can find the right words to describe their thoughts. Plainly speaking, the perfect writer does not struggle to write at all because for them it is an instinct. Just as humans seek self-preservation through food, water, and shelter, the perfect writer needs a pen and paper to survive.
Words have never been instinctual for me. As a child, I had a hard time spelling and sounding them out, and in class, I could never keep up with what my teachers wrote on the board. Hence, I started to avoid language altogether, and whenever I had to read something, I simply panicked. Movie subtitles, board game cards, and children’s books; they all overwhelmed me. I wanted to sit in silence for the rest of my existence. But how foolish of me to think a person could go on living without needing to say a word.
As I entered my adolescence, certain aspects of my life suddenly felt overwhelming. My emotions were indescribable, and they all seemed to overlap with one another until one day I could no longer tell what exactly I was feeling. Of course, I would try to speak to friends and family about the things I was dealing with. More often than not, they were confused by all my blabbering and would simply give me advice on the hardships of teenagerhood because I could never give them a direct answer when they asked me, “What’s wrong?”
At some point, I realized that no matter how many times I went to countless people for support, what I needed most was to sit alone and untangle my thoughts into one place; a blank page. I bought a journal and started writing anything and everything I needed to make sense of. Every entry was messy; crossed-out sentences and new ones squeezed at the top, arrows pointing to the margins filled with my handwriting, and small tears on the paper from how hard I sank my pen into the page. The more I wrote, the better I understood myself and began to see the intimacy I had formed with writing.
Recently, the idea of the “perfect” writer has been taking on a whole new meaning for me. Perhaps writing is not a matter of instinct or meant to be easy at all. To me, writing has evolved into an exercise of self-discovery, and as humans, we are beings of endless mystery. If I must wrestle with the page to uncover parts of myself, then that is something I’m willing to break a sweat for. Writing has nothing to do with perfection and outcome but has everything to do with resilience.
“No me importa si es pésimo. La única manera de aprender a escribir es escribiendo.”