Out of Pain Comes Passion

Deep down I always knew there was a writer inside of me. Someone who appreciates words more than most people, and loves to ramble on. When I was a kid I loved to read all kinds of books, regardless of the age level (I read To Kill a Mockingbird in 8th grade....how many kids do that?). I actually wrote a lot of short stories when I was a kid too, even when they weren't required.

In high school I started writing poetry, which was pretty much pure crap until I learned a few things about the world. Later work was a whole lot better, and I appreciated other's poems more too. My best poetry surfaced while in the middle of an abusive relationship. My mom referred those poems as the "scary" ones. HA! Well, yeah...but out of pain comes passion and intensity. When all you want to do is scream but all you can do is write, a lot of honesty tends to come out on that paper. I found that to be the best way to handle the situation and hang on to my sanity.

Several years after that relationship ended, I woke up one day to find myself yet again alone and without direction. I've at least let go of that idea that families are suppose to be perfect (you know, with mom, dad, and 2.5 kids with the same fathers) and I've stopped pouting about that. I can deal with the fact I'm the head of this household and have two kids with two different people (while one kid's dad is very easy to deal with, I wish to hell the other would fall off the face of the Earth). What bothers me still though is I'm not doing what I really want to do. Somewhere I got this idea implanted into my head that a "job" is what we do to support our families regardless of the cost, and we are all suppose to have one. Oh, and we aren't suppose to like it.

I say screw that.

I've been playing by my own rules for quite a few years, but I'm still not where I want to be. We barely get our bills paid every month, and some months I swear I pull it out of thin air. And you know what? I really don't enjoy what I do. It's a job. What the hell. No wonder I'm so damn unhappy - I hate what I do and it still doesn't pay the bills.

It's time for a change. I decided to go back to my original passion in life - words. And not as a corporate puppet or boring babble. No, I actually want to enjoy what I write. People do it every day, so why not me? You know I found a short story from when I was probably 10 or 11, expecting to get a good laugh out of it, and much to my surprise it was written fairly well. There it was in me all along, and I'm just now finding it.

Surprisingly I'm not really scared. If I get a few rejections, oh freaking well. I'm the Idea Queen. If they all don't like the book I'm almost finished with (which is a novel by the way - talk about setting the bar high), then I'll just write another one. Maybe a children's book for the second one, since that was my original dream. I've read enough in my lifetime to know what makes a damn good story that kids like. Plus there's plenty of crap in my life that makes for good fiction - some of it I don't think they'd believe was true stories!

So here we go, starting over again. Funny how there has to be painful events and thoughts to stir up new ideas. But like I mentioned already and hence the title - out of pain comes passion. At least it does for me.