I am an artist.
Do I have to say that?
Do I have to declare it?
How many people will enter my life, and ask me not to write about them?
How many people will make me happy, or hurt me deeply, and expect me to tell no one?
I write. That makes me a writer.
I am not a gossip.
I am not a braggart.
I am not a slanderer.
I only share what happens - what really happens - and how it makes me feel, in hopes that someone out there might be moved. Someone out there might feel less alone. Someone out there might finally be able to point to my words - words they couldn't conjure themselves - and say, "That."
I am an artist.
This is my art.
What I write is poetry.
What I write is my heart.
This is more than kiss and tell.
Do all artists face the same kind of judgment? Or, worse yet, requests to not be a part of it?
Who would ask a painter to depict anyone but them in oil? A composer to silence his music? A memoirist to ignore everything committed to memory, and withold it all greedily?
How do you tell an artist what to do? Worse yet, how do you tell an artist what not to do?
I have to write. These words are within me. I have to let them out.
If I don't write them, it doesn't mean they never happened. The wounds won't heal. No one will learn. Nothing will grow.
