When I Write

Do you think you’re a different person when you write?

When I write, I feel like I become a different person, someone who is removed from my usual daily self. I become an observer of my actual self, and from there I draw inspiration for most of my works.

There is a vulnerability that I feel when I write. I am no longer me – I become someone whose soul is stripped naked for my own examination. Each emotion, whether it is happiness, sadness, anger or pain is under the scrutiny of the writer in me. I try to translate these complicated feelings into words but sometimes, it is an exhausting journey. It’s like chasing the ends of the horizon, no matter where you go, there will always be that thin line where the sky and earth kiss. It’s the same with words and emotions, sometimes; there are just not enough words. When this happen, the writer in me just stops and I transform back.

I guess this explains why for the longest time, I never marked my works with my own name. It’s not that I feel remove from it, rather, I feel like it is a different part of me that have mustered up the words to create poetry or stories or whatever it was that I worked on.

Recently, I’ve started to inked my name on my poetries, and it feels weird for me. I now understand why some people prefer to mark their works under a different name. Some of the world’s best writers have at one point stamped a pen name under their work. I can’t speak for them, but maybe, just maybe, they felt the same way that I did.

Well, this is a segue but I’ve also now understand what Beyonce meant when she said on stage, she was Sasha Fierce. Maybe we all have different personas, I don’t know. All I know is that when I write poetry, I give some of my biggest secrets to the world. My poetry is the stripped versions of me, the one that not everyone sees or meet.

So, have you ever felt like you transform to be someone else when you start writing?