An Argument for the Sake of Writing
or Convincing Myself That I'm Still a Writer, Even Though I Haven't Written In a Month
Fresh off an argument on who gets the responsibility and, I would say, joy of designing and decorating our future home1, I plunged my hands into the now lukewarm sink of discolored bubbly water. I wash, he dries. We fall into a quiet rhythm. Not an angry one; those frustrations have faded and resolution (as much as is possible for an argument over a future we don’t really know) has settled in. The dishes get scrubbed, rinsed, dried, and put away in their correct cabinets.
Conversation picks up again. I don’t remember what on. I tend to forget these kinds of details, something he has taken to making a great deal of fun of me for.
“You’d think you’d remember details like this,” he shakes his head, “you’re a writer after all.”
But my mind is more often filled with frivolous details or weighty ideas in the process of being dissected. Topics of conversation, the weather, the time, the date, who said what - they don’t matter in general. Until I need them to.
Rather, my mind swirls with the important things.
That bird is following a pattern. Three hops, then a short fly. Land, repeat. Interesting.
I wonder if they’re married. I don’t see a ring, but look at how he looks at her.
The sunrise is a different color today than it was yesterday. What would one call that color? It’s almost a neon pink. I wonder if this is the same neon light of so many people’s weekly night party scene? Would they like this neon better or the one they already know? Maybe they know both well. Still, which do they prefer?
I am lighter when I walk outside in the morning. I wonder if it is the fresh air. The sunlight? Maybe it is the silence of the phone, or the lack of preoccupation with the world on social media. Maybe it is because I can hear God when I am quiet.
The conversation trails and then stop abruptly at a question I’m not prepared for.
“How is your writing going?”
Silence follows.
“Are you posting lately?”
I try to pull back the embarrassed smile that slips onto my face, but my face has always held the upper hand in situations like these. A meager ummmm slips out.
“Do you still want to be a writer?” comes next. And of course I do. I want it more than anything. I couldn’t not be a writer if I tried.
Words are in the impressions of my mind, the pupils of my eyes, they wind themselves through my body on the paths of my veins. When I inhale, it is words. When I exhale, it is words. The anxiety in my throat and the dance in my feet, everything in me. It is all words. Words breathed into life.
“Of course I do,” I respond.
“Then what is your reason for not writing?”
I fired a slow myriad of excuses his way, all of which he called BS on.
“The reality is you’re just not writing,” he said bluntly.
“I just don’t know what to say.”
When I first started writing, I wrote mainly observations on Christianity through the lens of a teenage girl. I admired theologians and mirrored their passion for Jesus, but paired it with my own plain life.
As I grew in confidence, I began to share my story of battling and eating disorder and regularly wrote encouragement for women struggling with their own body image.
“But I have more than just that to say,” I told him. “I don’t want to write only about our bodies. I want to write about life and living it, about church, worship, prayer, peace, Jesus as the Bible describes Him and the Jesus we make Him out to be, change, work, rest, friendship and love, marriage, adventuring, writing, creativity, family, nature. I want to write about whatever I want to write about. I don’t want to be the body image girl or the contemplations on Christianity girl. I just want to be a writer.”
And so, it turns out, I knew exactly what to say.
The space between noticing and writing has been paralyzing. But I don’t believe that it has to stay that way. For now I’ll inch closer each day, closing the gap with consistent weaving of a thread, forming what was once two things into one sealed seam.
I am the creative, the artist, the imaginative one in the relationship. I didn’t want his ideas to stifle my expression and long-held dreams of a beautiful home. This isn’t how marriage works, I’ve learned. This is not two becoming one. There has to be room for both ideas, both designs, both creativities.