I've written all my life.
When a small child I used to write lines pretending they were words. Once I've learnt the alphabet I started reading and writing compulsively. I've always written diaries, short stories, letters, articles for school publications... Writing is part of me as much as speaking is.
The act of writing is crucial to structure my deepest thoughts. Things I might talk superficially with friends around some drinks at a bar are sometimes poured on paper. The same happens when it comes to personal relations. Writing down to someone is absolutely imperative if the realtionship is important to me. I think I've written to every single important person in the different stages my life. What and how I express myself on writing cannot be reproduced live. Not in the same way, at least. And vice versa. Long texts, short messages, poems... All my dear friends, relatives and lovers got a bit of me through letters.
Yet, my writing has changed dramatically in the last years. I probably write more in English than Portuguese and I definitelly type more on my keyboard than use a pen and paper. I get myself only writing on paper to those really important people I meet as a way to celebrate their meaning in my life. For them and for me. As a way of touching them. As a way to caress them. And me. Sadly, this now unusual act becomes more and more difficult. Writing down a letter requires time, patience, inspiration and physical effort. Requires love.
Hectic lives leave little time off to dedicate to others and, therefore, to oneself. I've written a four pages letter to this wonderful woman who I recently met. By the end of this exercize my hand and wrist hurted so much I could not believe it! My middle finger on my write hand, which used to be hard for writing, was now almost injured after some lousy four pages!!!
The metaphor behind it scared me to hell! If I now have little time, little patience, little inspiration and poor physical conditions to write to someone... That must mean I have little love in my life. That means I'm probably living against my own nature. That means I'm desperate to be just a human being - as the animal. That means that I now have to apply extra effort in trying to fill my basic physical and emotional needs, to live in harmony with my nature, with myself!
And what is even more scary is that I am not alone in this...
I predict a riot. Maybe I'll start one myself.
...
"We were outside, always outside, like heretics or lepers forbidden to pass the city gates.