The Curse that consumes me…

All of us have our individual curses, something that we are uncomfortable with and something that we have to deal with, like me making horror films, perhaps.
~Wes Craven

I have a curse.

And it consumes me.

It has for a while and I never knew to deal with it.

At least when I was younger I thought it was a curse.

I never knew how to understand it. I didn’t know to explain it to people.

I talk to myself.

I always feel like I have so many people inside of me.  I found myself having conversations with myself.  Literally having conversations with myself and wondering if I was crazy.

No, I don’t hear voices telling me to do things.  I hear stories that need to be told.  Characters that manifest themselves and urge me to tell the things that they want to say.

Earlier I wrote a piece about hearing my characters talk to me asking to be written and it becomes so unbearable that I must put their stories down on paper.

I would close my eyes and see scenes of people.  People I didn’t know but over time they became my friends and I had to ask them things about their life and I found that I could not live without them. 

When I was younger I thought that it was just imaginary friends and that when I grew older that would all fade.  When I was in high school I would spend lots of time in my room, writing poetry, and short stories and having conversation with new people and new characters swimming around in my head. 

I felt like I was crazy and I could not tell anyone what I was experiencing.  People would see me having these conversations and they would wonder if I was truly talking to myself.

 I wasn’t…at least not in that sense.  Sometimes I have to ask the characters out loud what their story is about or what parts of their story they want me to tell. 

But it was difficult to explain this to them.  Sometimes my world is lonely and scary.  I retreat afraid that if anyone knew about my curse they will not understand.

At one point in my life I hated this.  It felt like blight that I needed to get rid of.  I didn’t associate it with my writing at first. 

It made me feel lonely sometimes not being able to tell anyone about my process.

As an adult I realize that it is not a curse but blessing in disguise.  When I have those moments where I can’t help but to talk back to them, I do my best work.  When I sit quietly and listen to these people and focus on them my writing is amazing to me.

I am afraid that when the conversations stop, so will my ability to write.  

When I am in my element, the talking is insistent and loud.  I cannot focus until I have their story done. 

Now, I have accepted these characters in my life. They are a part of them and I must accept them because I accept myself. 


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