Writing after a year of silence.
To write is a brave act. Daring to bare your mind onto a page in hopes that another will find resonance in it, that another will find challenge in it, that you will find catharsis in it, is brave. Whenever I strike ink on page or hands on a keyboard I am enacting, the innately human experience of, expression. I find value in sharing the tangled mess of words that escape my grey matter like spinal fluid leaking out my fingertips.
Why do I write? It’s a question I’ve asked myself many times. It often feels futile to produce work when the world is so full of ideas that are smarter, faster, more impressive than my own. Is it for recognition? Is it for acclaim? It may seem enticing to think that mere words on a page can somehow curate power, but the weight of the responsibility of that power weighs heavily on those who wield it. For me, I write because I’m not good at anything else. I write because I can’t stop myself. I dare to bare my mind onto a page in hopes that I will find resonance in the chaos of my own tattered experiences.
I have a real fear around being seen and known and understood. It stems from a life of ridicule for existing ‘differently’ than others think I should. But whenever I find the courage to share and someone in the room feels seen and known and cradled in the shape of my expression I find joy overshadows that fear.
We’re all afraid of something. I fear my own shadow — the darkness that lingers between pretty images sewn with sinew and pain. What if they think I’m strange? What if they think I’m crazy? What if they hurt me because they disagree?
Truth is harsh. Especially to those who do not wish to receive it. But the truth is an endless ray of sun burning down in forty degree heat. The truth hurts. Reality stings because it is unavoidable and most are not ready to face it. No one is immune to pain. Truth prods at wounds we’d rather leave unbothered until it festers into sickness. But whether we tend to that pain does not remove it’s existence. To be human is to love and to love is to lose and to lose is to be human. So the cycle wears on.
I cannot control the reactions of others. I cannot expect a specific interpretation of the words I put onto a page. I cannot and should not interfere with the interstitial tissue of belonging while it stretches and snaps and grows and changes. The world is full of people who are ‘different.’ I don’t want to let those who tried to prune my voice in the past to succeed by allowing them to live in my subconscious and spread vitriol posthumously. Those moments of agony are dead and my anxiety is a vestigial protection mechanism that has outgrown its environment.
I dare to be different. Not because I’m trying to be different, but because I can’t be anything other than myself. If others label me as such, it has nothing to do with me. The most powerful thing I can do is accept myself, oddities and all, and press on in the directions I’m called. I cannot contrive their perception nor can I control their interpretation. I should not interfere when rejection is found in place of belonging. It’s an infection rooted out.
I’ve prevented myself many times over the last year from hitting ‘post’ out of fear. Deep truth probed old wounds that I’d let fester and the sickness made it all the more painful. But instead of abandoning myself to numbness in the wake of internal wounds, I withstood the agony and cleaned out the infection.
It’s the old cliché. Life is hard. I chose to be tough and it nearly broke me. It was only when I gave way to the crumble, when I hit the basin, that I could wade through the darkness and find myself lingering in the fever of hatred and anger and bitterness that I convinced myself didn’t exist. I was afraid of my own shadow.
I couldn’t post any of my thoughts because I needed to wade through them. I couldn’t write for acclaim or recognition. I could only write because it was the buoy that kept me from drowning. It’s a scary thing to be seen when the light is harsh. It’s even more terrifying to face the darkest parts of yourself and learn to sit with it, to accept it, to understand it. The person that needed to find resonance in my words was me.
2026 was a year of excavation. I found myself unearthing realities I thought I’d long left buried in the past. But they were waiting in the in-between. The ghosts of yesterday’s pain lingered in my interstitial tissue like lactic acid built over time that never dispersed. My rage grew like a boil to the surface, exposed and raw and oozing with ugliness. Yet it was honest in it’s deformity. I needed to lance my rage and let it out.
Why do I write? I write for perspective. I write to find that achingly human sense of belonging. But I found that belonging in the bellows of my mind. I breathed life into myself again. In confronting the shadow behind me I freed myself to step into the light knowing exactly what was trailing behind. I am not made up of my darkness. I am not made up of my light. I am the shaded complexities of bone and sinew and skin made known to others in a play of refracted light.
I breathe in a mortal shell and I breathe out immortal existence. I reach through the shared experience of life to find my individual perspective. Once I paint that perspective my job is over. I’ve existed. I’ve experienced. I’ve expressed. The painting is made of me but it does not make me.
What colours other people see in that painting is made of the shadows and hues of them.
Gabby Alysia is a Canadian writer based in London, UK. She runs this independent blog, Poetry, Prose, and Peonies, and a Substack. She writes opinion pieces, poetry, writing tips, narrative reviews, and short stories.
Leave a Reply