Writer's Block

He wanted to write.  The words had left him.  In the haze of having everything he could ever want, and yet losing everything that could ever possibly matter to him, the words that had defined his life, and been his constant comfort, friend, and companion were gone.

He didn’t need them anymore.  Not like he used to, but he missed them.  He craved them more than he knew he probably should, but they were gone.  Gone.  His muse, his words, his life was absent, never to be reclaimed again, and he wanted to cry.

Some nights he did cry.  But it was never at a time when he needed the words.  It was the pain of not having his muse, or maybe it was the pain of actually having his muse.  He wasn’t even sure what his muse was.  Was it her, the girl he had forced himself into loving to appear normal, who had long since left him, just like the words had? Or was it him?  That form of perfection who he sat near every night listening to the flawless voice lifting him and carrying him from vision to vision, always imagining the flawlessness that the two of them could have if he ever opened his mouth and poured out the words he wanted to say.

For having a life that revolved around words, he hated the fact that they were gone.  And they were gone.

Maybe they weren’t gone.

Perhaps the real fear was the intimacy that he had with the words.  He was afraid of what people would see when they saw his words. What hidden horrors from his soul would manifest themselves as he unleashed the words?  They knew him so perfectly; every single feature of his soul was exposed, naked and bare before the words.  It was the words that had the power to expose him in all his weakness and fear to the world around him.

That was what scared him.  It had nothing to do with his muse.  The words were his muse, and the words were painfully aware of his lust and desire.  They would throw themselves together constantly, to remind him how very far he had fallen.  That was what he feared, and that’s why he avoided the words.  However there would be times, moments of loneliness, where he would return to the words, and invite them to tell him the exact nature of his soul.  It was in those moments that he and the words would merge, and flow.

They were intertwined in the most intimate of forms.  They knew his thoughts, his feelings, his mind.  It was all theirs and they understood him in a way that no other human ever had.  He knew them too.  He knew which words got along, which flowed together, which would harmonize and sing.  He knew how to weave them together in sheer beauty, in ways that would leave chills, and open minds, and for that they both loved and hated him.

There is a real fear in intimacy that both words and writer were acutely aware of.  To be known and understood is so enchanting.  It’s something that is craved.  Understanding is a vital part of survival. But intimacy is more than survival.  It is seeing the horrors of another individual, the masks are removed, the disguises stripped away, leaving two individuals bare and revealed in all their weakness and insecurity.  It is a fearful thing, and although there is a love that comes with that kind of understanding, there is a fear and a hate that entwines itself in that love. It is truly fearful to see that anyone can understand that much.