I am a writer.

I have to say this to myself because I once let someone tell me I am not a writer. That I was not favored with the gift of stringing words together to form a poetic stream that bounces around a mind long after the eyes have feasted upon it. Ha!

I may not be a GREAT writer yet but with patience and nurturing I could become an important one, whether in my own life or for the world remains to be seen. I have so many unfinished works, languishing on my computer, waiting to be done. I have stories living in my head; characters that come visit me and whisper their stories into my subconscious.

I have been ignoring them and in doing so, ignoring my purpose, to write; for myself, for others, to heal, to learn, to experience, to create space for other characters to be born. I ache to retell the stories of my neigbours, if only to document their lives, so the future knows that So-and-So lived, and they struggled. I grieve for the untold tales of the man who was set upon by five teenagers, intent on murder, of how in a few years time no one will remember that they dragged his disemboweled body across the field of his rural village, to a “witch” who removed his liver for her muti. My heart bleeds to think these boys walk around among the innocent of this village, murder in their eyes, their brutality unquenched, stalking their next prey. If I had written their story, would they have paid?

I want to commit to paper, thereby immortalizing the cruelty of the father who asked his young daughter to disrobe for him, taking her virginity as surely as if it belonged to him. Should he not be exposed to the masses? Removed from the shadows of anonymity to face his actions and be judged? As a writer, I could have fought the little girl’s fight.

I once let somebody once take my power, they broke me, they changed me and when I lay shattered, a mere remnant of what I had believed myself to be, they opened the door and shoved me outside. I left behind my confidence and my love for myself.

Today I reclaim myself.

I am a writer.

And I’m not embarrassed to say so.