On my drive home from an eight hour shift, I felt an obligation to write. I did not know why I felt an uncomfortable obligation to do something that I normally do by choice and with gladness.
I showered and sat at my patio table in my pajamas and wrote a card to my boyfriend and another card to a friend that is moving away. The writing of farewell to a person so close to me got me thinking about other relationships that I have in my life.
It is a blessing to have people in my life that make writing goodbye cards so hard. A blessing in disguise is also people in my life that have made a soft exit, and it not always have been a bad thing.
Sitting in the metal chair with my legs crossed, the thoughts that were running through my mind typically would have been the words that I would have written in my journal. However; it was almost as though I was being pushed to write something else in order to get these deep thoughts moving.
Then I began to consider why writing was my mind and soul’s form of emotional expression during that time. I was using handwritten cards to convey my gratitude toward my boyfriend and my sadness toward my friend that is moving. Because writing is such an automatic release for my mind, was the feeling of obligation to write, really an obligation? It was almost a natural response to these heavy emotions that were affecting me.
Since moving home with my parents, I no longer write to my grandma. She lives down the road from me again. Opposingly, I continue to write to my high school friend who used to live down the road but now lives in another state. Do geographical changes affect me more deeply than I had thought? I really never considered a deep emotion when it came to people moving away. Not until I had this recent extreme urge to write these feelings.
Pen-to-paper writing allows the mind to slow its thoughts and release them onto stationary. As my mind to slows down while I write, I process emotions more thoroughly and then let them go.
It got darker by the minute on the humid August night and soon I was sitting in the dark. The obligation may have just been the need for a release from my body. Writing a card to one person with a selfish expression of my sadness for them leaving opened my mind to the deep thoughts on other relationships that I have in my life, and even how I processed the feelings on these relationships.
Ultimately, I was able to discern how grateful I am to have such meaningful people in my life: Friends, family, my boyfriend, coworkers, and everybody else who makes me excited to enter each new day, even if one day they may leave. The quote “I am a part of all that I have met” from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem Ulysses sat in my head.
The feelings that spilled out into cards allowed for an opening of deep thought on the humans that have impacted me. Maybe the feeling that I had surrounding writing was not an obligation, but rather an internal itch for a certain emotion to be freed and contemplated.