Catharsis

Some days, some hours, some moments, life can take a downward spiral and end up leaving us broken, defeated, and demoralized.  These descents into emotional desolation can be provoked by situations, places, people, or occurrences—and once the declivity begins, you can feel powerless against it, completely incapable of halting the fall or preventing the impending crash.

And when we reach that low point, we all need some form of cathartic release to counteract the onset of despair and depression.

Some find catharsis in drugs, alcohol, and cutting—effectively trading one form of negativity for another, without getting any closer to a healthy management of their inner demons.  Some, having been clinically diagnosed with some variety of mental instability, are able to find catharsis only in psychotropics....and some make use of psychotropics without an accompanying diagnosis.

But, for the vast majority of us, release is something we achieve either within ourselves or by performing some ritualistic activity that has the ability to absorb the dismal feelings and contain them safely.

I know people who pray, people who read, people who sing, people who write music, people who play an instrument, people who run, people who work out, people who cry or sleep, punch a pillow, curse or even let out a soul-wrenching scream.

I write.

There is nothing I cannot write.  I can write to dispel negativity, to elate over accomplishments, to celebrate happy times, to memorialize important events, and to express to people things I am unable to speak.  So I write.....and I write.....and I write.  I write every day.  Some times I write on a computer screen; some times I put pen to paper and fill the pages with my thoughts; some times, I need write only a sentence or a few words onto a scrap of paper or the back of an envelope or the corner of my shopping list.  But whatever the circumstance, whatever the emotion, I write.

Much of what I write, lately, ends up here on this blog, displayed for the eyes of anyone interested or curious enough to read the words.  But although I value the readership, know this: I do not write for you.  I write for the benefit of myself, as this blog is my forum to channel my thoughts out of myself and into the vastness of the universe at large and into the intangible expanse of the internet.  Those of the thoughts which I choose to share publicly are still my own, and still collected for my own purposes.

This act of writing cathartic for me.

If the reading of any of my words provides benefit to someone beyond myself, that is merely a bonus.  For, by the time the words have been published here, they have already served their purpose to me.