Today, yet again, my thoughts wander seeking a word-
An intoxicating word, a venomous word,
A bewitching word, a wrathful word,
Today, yet again, my thoughts wander seeking a word.
-Faiz Ahmad Faiz
Words have always been both my refuge and prison.
Speaking has never come easily to me, a cruel irony given my profession. Social anxiety, like an ever-present shadow, wraps its tendrils around my throat, choking out the words before they can form.
When I do manage to speak, my voice is often stifled by a speech impairment, rendering my attempts at communication fragmented and halting.
This Sisyphean task of vocalising my thoughts, has sculpted my relationship with language into something both painful and beautiful.
Writing became my sanctuary, a place where I could express the depths of my soul without the impediments that mar my spoken words.
It is as if my fingers, dancing across the keyboard, become the voice I cannot use.
They articulate the thoughts that my tongue cannot, weaving them into narratives that convey the emotions I struggle to express aloud.
One of my literary idols, Ernest Hemingway once said, "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." For me, this bleeding is not a metaphor but a visceral reality. Each word I write is a drop of blood, a piece of my pain and trauma that I lay bare for the world to see.
Writing is my way of purging the demons that haunt me, a cathartic release that keeps me from being overwhelmed by the darkness within.
The act of writing feels akin to the gnawing compulsion a mouse has to manducate. If left unchecked, these emotions, these bottled-up experiences, would surely overgrow, constricting and suffocating me from within. The pen, then, becomes my incisor, meticulously gnawing away at the bars of my emotional cage.
And that analogy with a rodent draws me a strange kinship with Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus (1986). Just as Spiegelman used the metaphor of mice to explore the horrors of the Holocaust, I turn to the written word to navigate the nets of my anxieties and vulnerabilities.
It is a harrowing journey, one that lays bare the raw flesh of experience, but a journey nonetheless, a path towards self-discovery paved with ink and introspection.
The act of writing is my way of gnawing at the ever-growing burden of my experiences.
Without this outlet, the weight of my unspoken words and unresolved traumas would crush me.
But there is a bittersweet beauty in this forced eloquence.
It is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, a reminder that even in the face of adversity, we can find ways to express ourselves and connect with others.
My writing is not just a reflection of my struggles but also a beacon of hope, a way to reach out to those who may be facing similar battles.
Through my words, I strive to build bridges, to create a sense of understanding and empathy that transcends the barriers imposed by my anxiety and speech impairment.
In this journey of self-contemplation, I have come to embrace my writing as both a gift and a necessity. It is a lifeline that keeps me tethered to the world, a means of communicating when my voice fails me.
In the quiet moments, when the weight of my silence becomes too much to bear, I find comfort in the knowledge that my words, though silent, can still resonate.
The written word empowers me in a way that spoken language never could. There, I can craft my thoughts with precision, and edit the stumbles and stammers that plague my spoken communication; I can weave narratives that transcend the limitations of halting voice, narratives imbued with a vulnerability and honesty that might otherwise remain cloaked in silence.
While a part of me yearns for the ease of conversation, for the unfiltered flow of spoken ideas, the written word has become a lifeline, a powerful tool for self-reflection and contemplation.
And in this relentless pursuit of expression, I find not just an escape but a verisimilitude of resonance with a brutally indifferent world.
Touseful Islam is the Deputy Content Editor of Bangladesh First, and styles himself as a carpenter of words.
He can be reached at: Tousef@Ymail.com
