I am not a writer. A writer is someone who carries a notebook with them everywhere they go, ready to write down any new little description or thought that comes into their mind, anything that they can take and describe in a new little pretty way that would make any reader’s heart ache and their thoughts spin around in different directions in hopes of figuring out the writer’s intent. That’s not me. A writer is someone who can look at a piece of fruit, or a picture of a dead man, and describe it in such a way that makes you feel compassion and a flood of emotions about an object that is so common to your everyday life, or so horrific you can barely stand to think about it. Writers are readers: they read everything, they study everything, in hopes of finding out new ways to describe something or perhaps new inspiration for a story. They can find inspiration from anything, anywhere, at any time, and write a piece no less beautiful than the most accomplished and celebrated writers. That is not me. Writers can stare at a piece of artwork and in seconds, feel enough emotions to compose several short sonnets in its honour, or simply recreate it in their own way in words that make you feel like you are really there. Their own emotions are more deep and heartfelt than ours; you could say they have an artist’s heart. They know the way you are supposed to feel, and they feel it, to the deepest and darkest of extremes. These are people that know how to live, how to love more deeply and meaningfully than the best of us, and they know how to exclaim it, how to describe it, how to make others feel it. That is not me.

I rarely carry a notebook, and when I do, it sits open for hours with me holding my pencil poised above the page, trying to get inspiration from something, anything. I sit and try to force words out on the page that eventually arrange themselves into a rough, choppy sentence that is not readable even for a child. I can’t make you feel my happiness, my sorrows, my anguish. I can try to tell you what love really is, but in truth, I really don’t know what it is. I have never been there.

Ask me to describe a piece of fruit or a sculpture, and you will get the color, shape, size and weight, if I can pick it up in my hand. (I might give you the texture, if I was able to describe that.) I cannot pick a scene in my head and make you wish you were there, I can barely even describe all the things that are happening in nature. (But sometimes I try.)

Reading things I have written is as boring as reading your shopping list; I have no original thought. I can not even simulate love or joy or sorrow because I do not know how that feels; I could not describe it to you. You would have to accept my bland and dull images that are as standard as clichés, as my explanations. There is nothing else I can think to say.

Try and sit me down with a pen and paper and teach me to write beautiful, flowing, flowery poems, and I will, for a while. But those words are not mine, those thoughts are foreign and I will soon drop the idea. (Good try though.) I want to write on my own, even if it means nothing.

I am not a writer. A writer can change the world. I can barely change myself. I am not a writer. You are.