For over sixteen years, I have poured my soul onto blank pages, coaxing words from the marrow of my being. This journey began humbly, a quiet exploration of language and thought, but in the past six years, my dedication has intensified, almost obsessively, as if each line, each carefully crafted phrase, might hold the key to my own salvation. I have pursued writing with the tenacity of someone who can do no less, a compulsion as natural as breathing and as necessary as hope itself. It has been an act of survival and expression, a way of leaving pieces of myself behind, like breadcrumbs in a forest I am constantly getting lost in.
During this time, I have applied to writing jobs and contests, hoping that somewhere in the vast, indifferent landscape of the literary world, a door would open, and I would finally be invited inside. On those rare occasions when I had the means, I reached out… no, I cast myself forth… toward those I thought might understand or even need my voice. I contacted singers and songwriters, musicians, bands of every status, from the famous to the barely known, those lingering in that strange, almost-glorious in-between. I extended my hand to them all, believing, perhaps naively, that they might recognize the spark within my words and lift them into a melody or song that others could hear. Yet, as it so often is for those who walk this path, money became a relentless gatekeeper, a reminder that dreams sometimes demand not just passion but the kind of resources I’ve struggled to gather.
These days, the pathways open to me feel few and narrow, barren trails when compared to the wide, glittering avenues that wealth might afford. Without the financial means to fund my ambitions, I’ve taken to every platform I can find, thrusting my work into the cacophony of social media, hoping my words might resonate amidst the noise. I’ve made countless videos, written blog posts, poured my heart into essays, and woven my soul into over a thousand poems, each one crafted with the belief that someone, somewhere, might stumble upon my work and see themselves reflected in it. Yet at every turn, I am met with silence, rejection, or worse… indifference, as if my creations were nothing more than fleeting shadows, ephemeral and unworthy of a second glance.
I am told, endlessly, to keep going, to push through, to do it only for myself. And while I do write for myself, for the visceral release it brings, I write, too, for those unseen kindred spirits who might one day find my work and feel less alone because of it. I continue, even as it grows harder, even as the weight of it pulls me downward, like an anchor cast into a fathomless sea. I do it for the strangers who might read my words and recognize a part of themselves within them, for the hope that my pain might serve as a balm to theirs.
But, with every passing day, this hope grows threadbare, fragile as the thin pages of a well-worn book. My efforts, once full of purpose and conviction, now seem like mere exertions, and I begin to question the worth of my relentless striving. More and more, I find myself wondering if the world will ever truly see me, or if I am simply casting my work into an empty void… a cavernous silence where my words are swallowed whole, leaving nothing behind but a faint echo that dissipates before it reaches another's ears. The unpublished poems, essays, and fragments of my mind sit idly in drafts, as if waiting for a moment that may never come.
If I share these works, if I fling them into the unforgiving vastness of the internet, I fear they will be devoured by the very algorithms that claim to connect us. I once thought that I was casting pearls before swine, a painful realization in itself, but I now understand that it is something even worse: my words vanish into a void, an empty echo chamber where they are seen only by a handful of people, quickly forgotten, buried beneath the relentless march of new content. The internet, which promises visibility, is a cruel and faceless gatekeeper that silences voices like mine in favor of the loud, the flashy, and the fleeting. This is not the life I imagined for my creations, and the disillusionment gnaws at me like a slow, quiet ache that refuses to abate.
I long, with every fiber of my being, for something more, something beyond the silence. I yearn for my words to take on new life, to be transformed into song, for I have come to understand that, for many, words alone are not enough. There is a need for melody, for rhythm and resonance, for the beauty of lyrics woven into music, a language that transcends words alone. People seem only to appreciate what I have to say if it is wrapped in the warmth of vocals, cradled by a melody that stirs the soul. Without this musical cloak, my words… however carefully chosen, however deeply felt… seem to carry little weight, as if they are somehow incomplete, unworthy of attention on their own.
And so, I find myself at a crossroads, unsure of how to proceed. Hope still lingers, a faint glimmer that refuses to die, though reality presses down with a harsh and unyielding hand. The sense that I am doing something wrong gnaws at me, a silent accuser that questions my every move. I find myself caught in a spiral of over-analysis, dissecting my efforts in search of flaws, of reasons for this constant rejection, this endless silence. Each failure, each overlooked piece, chips away at my resolve, leaving me weary and unsure, teetering on the edge of despair. I begin to wonder if I am simply chasing shadows, if my words will ever find a home outside the confines of my own heart.
And yet, even in these dark moments, a part of me cannot let go. There is something in the act of creation, in the formation of a sentence or a stanza, that remains sacred to me. Even as the world turns away, as doors remain firmly closed, I continue to write, if only because I must, because these words are as much a part of me as the blood in my veins. They are my legacy, my silent testimony to a life lived with yearning, with sorrow and beauty intertwined. And so, I will keep going, even as exhaustion seeps into my bones, even as hope flickers like a candle in the wind.
For perhaps, one day, my words will find their way to someone who needs them as much as I do. Perhaps they will resonate, like the echo of a distant song, filling an emptiness in another soul, as they have filled mine. And if that day comes, if even one person feels seen and understood by the words I have written, then perhaps it will all have been worth it. Until then, I will write on, a quiet defiance against the silence, a refusal to let my voice be drowned in the endless noise. I will write, because it is all I know, and because, somehow, it is enough… even if no one else ever hears it.
-aubsthepoet
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