My Words Are Doorways To You

Creative non-fiction prose on why I write

I write to understand the sorrow, beauty, and enigmas of the world.

I write to grasp those fleeting moments that have left me in the wake of mind-numbing awe. I write so I don’t feel so alone in the empty expanse. So, I don’t have to carry these boulders by myself. To grasp that hope that one day I will find love within the impermanent, within the stories that weave our world together one heart to another. I write to remove death’s real power over me.

I write so that I can be free.

I exist only because of you. Through our interdependency and the forces that bind us. In these words, I bleed. In these stories, sits my body. In these pages, sleeps my memories that take to the magnificent spiraling twilight. How many moments lie hidden in obscurity? In these poems, you can see my neuronal web-like patterned faces in the clouds. In these equations, I wield the power of forethought. In my words, I rebel against the universe that tries to contain me.

I tell stories to share with someone my joys and wonders — and all those fantastic people that have come and gone in this life. Those friends and strangers who made me think and believe that tomorrow could carry the truths I long for and the hopes that I hold onto, even when my hands are empty, bare, and cold. I write to show you my dreams. To strip myself naked in front of you so that I can finally breathe, and mourn without feeling ashamed or afraid anymore.

I write so I don’t have to be alone when I cry at night. As the early morning fog fades from winter’s repose, these words light a path for me to take, and I hope you journey with alongside me, if only for a single infinity. I’m tired of being so afraid all the time. So, I write out these fears, these ghosts that never leave, this heaviness that seems to increase every year. I write to continue forever onward. To never gave up and let the hurt and sorrows win out. I will never give up. And one day the darkness of depression will have to feel the light and love and harmony. For only then will I rise, and feel the warmth of human touch again.

I write to understand the complexities of the cosmos. To pack infinity within a snowglobe and shake the order about and then try to assemble it again. My ignorance is endless, but I work with love and compassion to reduce it every day. Every character is an extension of you and me. I do so to travel the stars, those nuclear furnaces that have long ago burned out. I want to know their secrets, hidden in the laws of mathematical songs. I listen, and what I hear, I give to you, my readers, my friends, all my knowledge collected like gems hidden in distant caves — seashells upon a stranded beach. I give it all to you in the end.

Because these words are not mine, they never were. They are the songs of humanity — the voices of the cosmos. All life is interconnected, through love, hardship, pain, and loss. We bear it all together, like transitory roots in cosmic soil — we are just a collection of narratives. And so when I listen, when I feel, I grasp those moments, and I speak for them and they for me, those who long to be heard, to shatter the chains that bind us to injustice or hate or cruelty. I write to you. I write for love and equality, and the end of disparity. I unearth the graves of time so I can give them another moment to live again.

I write fiction to sprinkle breadcrumbs along tomorrow’s pathways. To create a future, I want to see. Like teleportation devices, stories thrown instantly into new lands and alien worlds to play out our struggles and sorrows upon the safety of a page. So that we may think about and beyond and ahead to those coming days that wait for none, but time’s empty flowerbed.

I write words heavy enough to bend the stage of the mind, and though that, I follow within the geodesic lines of my uncertain fate to whatever rests abiding in fleeting photon dreams. I write to unweave these tangled knots of ‘what-ifs’ tearing my mind apart. I know I cannot give life to the past. I know I cannot bring the dead back, but these words have such talismanic powers that it seems, just for a moment, I could.

I write to face my judgment in the recesses of the mind — those dark and endless caverns. And through a poor man’s telepathy, I can share myself with you in the future and across the globe and skies. So in a way, these words connect us all beyond space and time, through the fires of our fortitudes, we shall rise once more.

I write so I can weep for those lost — even those I call strangers, whose hearts bleed for their friend who will never return. These words are my swords and armor to protect those who cannot defend themselves. My words are the voices of those who cannot speak — those who, like I, yearn for a better world.

My words are trembling hands that reach out for a hug and comfort and flame of empathy. Although atoms are mostly voids, these words and concepts fill that emptiness — these are the force carriers that move worlds and mend hearts and cure illnesses beyond the virus or bacterial realms. These words are that which fills our emptiness, confusion, and doubt.

I write, so these pages become more than carbon, but quilts stitched with human antiquity — to form a world of more love and kindness than hate or hardship. This ink becomes our blood that has soaked these lands and our tears that washed it clean. I long to give hope and truth to history. So, that our ancestors can find our stories and know what we felt, to know that we loved, and we never lost ourselves in the madness.

I write to her. She has become a symbol of my loss and the past regrets I cannot let go of. The one whose heart still follows like a second shadow. My stories and dreams have begun to merge now. Somewhere in those sentences is the discernment and comprehension of a philosopher-poet. I write so that I can move on and lay to rest, those angry ghosts of yesterday.

I write to heal, to become a better human every day. To learn from my past mistakes and hurt and actualize my potential. Through stories, I form myself like Prometheus. I write to tell you about all those times I died and lived again. Each story echoes these new beginnings.

I scribble sonnets and poems to understand my final truth, to one day sum it all up in an aphorism, to then place it in an old chest and lock it away for someone else to find. I write to one day locate my home again. To live there, make a family and watch the sunsets grow tired and sleep peacefully among the fields of flowers and nectar-feeders buzzing to and fro. To wait and love and do it all again.

To one day give back my formless self to the universe and say thank you for this myriad of opportunities. And with my final tears, I shall water the forests of being and hope that new life shall grow again.

My words are doorways to you. My readers. My friends. And I hope you see me as I see you — a light in the dark — and a way to everlasting hope.

© Bradley J Nordell 2020

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