What I Write About When I Write About Pain

by Grace Sofia 

My relationship to writing? It started as fanfiction for One Direction. I used to scribble my name in notebooks alongside Zayn Malik and Liam Payne (rip). It showed me everything that made me fall in love with writing, voice and desire in every character. Then became a 5000 follower Tumblr blog where I wrote mini fics everyday. I was anonymous for the most part, and expanded on my ability to be vulnerable. 

I started writing my first self insert stories, with characters based off of real people. I went from using people I didn’t know, and characters from a show, to trying to imitate life. Finally to where I am now where I can only write original stories and content. 

This isn’t about a singular gunshot wound, but rather a thousand paper cuts that never healed. 

My real life experiences made my tone raw, composed, and honest. I take meds for depression. I have felt some extreme heartbreaks and loss, everyday I have to drag myself to school to prove that I can hack it out there. How did I write through the burnout and invisibility? Journaling my hurt, creating through hard times, sometimes I write a sentence, other days I write 2000 words. 

I still write to these people. The ones that have hurt, that have left, that have walked away. We might not talk to each other anymore, but I still have things to say and questions to ask. Like, why wasn’t I enough? And why did you always want me to forgive you, but you could never forgive me? I have random cuts that still haven’t healed, some of them deeper than a paper cut, but with just as much sting. It’s harsh and hot, and burns like spices. I know these moments like the back of my hand, that initial feeling of those cuts. They feel like being licked by a lighter, a small flame for less than a second, not long enough to cause physical damage but long enough to feel the pain. 

  One of the hardest parts of my life right now is figuring out my identity. I want to be soft and feminine and taken care of, but I always want to be strong and independent. I don’t think those things have to be mutually exclusive. I’m not angry, I’m Dominican, I’m not loud, I’m Dominican, I’m not expressive, I’m Dominican. 

I’m not bitter, I’m Dominican. 

I don’t hold a grudge, I’m Dominican. 

I’m not rude, I’m Dominican. 

I’m not difficult, I’m Dominican. 

I’m not extra, I’m ancestral. 

I’m not overreacting, I’m Afro-Latina and I know what silence costs. 

It doesn’t help that everyday I’m balancing on a fine line between higher education and hood culture. I don’t know where I belong. 

Writing has become an act of rebellion, against oppressors, against generational trauma. It’s my space to be loud, soft, mad, sassy, and everything else I want to be all at once. When I’m writing, I can be as real as I want, as imaginative, as descriptive, as figurative, it doesn’t matter. As long as I feel better by the end of it. 

Not all of my pain is worth publishing, but they are worth writing and processing. Sometimes something beautiful comes from it, and I realize I’m lucky I can write. Because my writing is proof that I lived through it. 

I am not too much, I’m my mother’s pride and joy. 

I’m not difficult, I’m my grandmother’s revenge. 

I am the woman my ancestors prayed for. 

I am loud, alive, full of fire, and unafraid.