Write of way

Making sense in a senseless world

La canción de acompañamiento de hoy: “LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii” de Bad Bunny

In the swirling tide of my early 20s, I acquiesced to a friend’s request to hash out our disagreement in person. We’d been dancing back and forth, the little blue bubbles expanding to fit our screens, for weeks, and she, very understandably and admirably, wanted to get to the bottom of our discontent. The contours of the disagreement have softened with time — I’m not exactly sure what the instigating event was any more. But I do remember, as I stumbled through voicing my feelings on a park bench in the city, the ache that settled as I knew I wasn’t making sense, that my spoken words weren’t accomplishing what I needed them to. They were quick to surrender, quick to explain away the feelings that were rubbing against my soul like a wet sock on a long hike. We left our little meeting, her more at ease and me unsure of what had happened, what I had agreed to, what I had said. Either way, the disagreement had been settled, and we walked out with our friendship in tact. For that alone, I was grateful.

After I returned to my apartment, I pulled out a journal and jotted down the thoughts that had been swirling in my mind. I turned them over and over, desperate to feel settled, to calm my nervous system, to lay the conflict to rest inside myself after it had been resolved externally. I wrote until the small muscles of my hand cramped and my handwriting turned unrecognizable, my mind more active than my voice had ever been. When I finished, I closed the journal. Now I, too, was more at ease, the conflict settled for me as much as it had been for my friend after our talk. The closure hadn’t come from sending her my thoughts, written out sloppily among the orderly lines of a journal page. It came from the act of writing itself.

I’d always written to make sense of the world, to make sense of my mind. Often, I feel trapped there, stuck with only my thoughts swirling around different centers of gravity, without any way to find my way out of the maze that this chaos creates. The process of writing — mulling over word choice, playing with sentence structure, the satisfaction of an arc neatly pulled off — offered space for another process, the one that moves at hyperspeed, the one more often discussed with therapists. The processing of emotions, of events, of trauma, filing each away into the recesses of my brain in such a way that mimics order, mimics sense. The sense I struggled to grasp otherwise, the disconnect I could feel in my body as we cruised along, logging each feeling, without knowing what it meant. Without knowing if it meant anything at all.

In the conflict with my friend so many moons ago, she had seen my insistence to speak through writing as a way of prolonging the conflict, the reliance on punctuation and hyper specificity a way of avoiding responsibility for resolving the conflict at all. I understand the perspective, one that is widely shared among people, the idea that writing is an excuse or a way out. Is a way to avoid having difficult conversations, of facing problems head on. Is a tactic to forget the ones on the receiving end of a diatribe, is a way of refusing to look someone in the eyes when you tell them they hurt you. Is a way to claim ignorance that you, too, hurt them. That is how so many people with ill-intent use writing, that I can barely blame anyone for assuming that is the case more often than not.

For others — me included — writing is not so much an abdication of responsibility or feeling as it is a full, headlong dive into both. To sit with the feeling, to react as it courses through the body, nerves firing, all in search of the exact word to describe the experience is uncomfortable, to say the least. It is work, the kind that constantly exfoliates the callouses built around our hearts and minds. To write openly into conflict with the intent of absolving it is to trust the person on the other end whole-heartedly, to know they will take the words appearing in black and white in good faith. It is an unbridled act of optimism — in others, in myself — to write through the messy, the emotional, the constantly shifting world of processing all life throws our way. Even the most clear-eyed analysis, when written, becomes vulnerable, open to misinterpretation or misunderstanding, all the authors can do, in that case, is trust they’ve done a good enough job to avoid the worst case outcomes.

In a world where those in power are attempting to radically devalue empathy and humanness, the ability to rely on our vulnerability, our humanness, becomes one of the most powerful tools we have. If that weren’t the case, those in power would not be pushing everyone from students to bankers to use artificial intelligence software to write through the mundanities of their days — they tell on themselves often, by substituting the word “writing” for “thinking” in the softwares’ promotional materials; they, too, see the two acts as interchangeable.

Therein lies the power of writing through a time of senselessness. Writing reasserts our humanity, our voice, our commitment to allowing our thoughts and feelings come to light. To give space to experiences different than our own, to craft an accurate history, to share in the small joys and successes of continued community. It may not solve any conflicts, and some may continue to press for something louder, more vocal. But for some — me included — it is the only way forward. It is the only avenue to make sense in a senseless world; it is a dedication to creating a world much better than the one we inhabit. It is taking time to be precise, accurate, thoughtful, intentional. It is speaking forcefully in the words chosen and the sentences constructed. It is knowing that my thoughts are rarely unique, or even especially interesting, but I may be able to provide shape to others’ minds by giving words to mine. Maybe then, we won’t walk away with ease, but with purpose, with understanding, with fire in our hearts to carry conversations happening elsewhere far from the page.

Here’s to making just a bit of sense, when we can.

- Megan