I do not know what I think, until I read what I write.

For the longest time, I was scared of writing about the things that bothered me, that scared me, that confused me. It wasn’t my place to tell those stories, because they bothered me, they scared me. They confused me. Then I met a girl. She had written a book, a reduction of the many thoughts churning, roiling in her skull. She had surrendered them, suffused with curiosity, conscious of the gaps, yet, surrendered to the pen. She wrote her thoughts. Someone read them and gave voice to the quiet things her soul had whispered to her over the long, quiet years of being bothered, scared confused. Someone read, someone sent, someone published what started as a rambling mass of motley thoughts shuffled together in a desperate bid to give air to a choked soul.

The words resonated. A deal was offered. A book was published.

I do not know myself, what I truly, deeply think of a thing, until I read what I write.

And so I write, to articulate my thoughts. And I write in the hope that one day, those thoughts will one day float off a shelf, sit between the thumb and index of a hand, and cause a voice to say,

“I did not know what I thought of this thing. Until I read what you wrote.”