Since the age of thirteen, writing has been the best way I’ve ever known to understand the world around me. My compulsive need to write is a topic I’ve thought about quite often over the years, wondering why I have always been drawn to the intricate arrangement of words on a page, playing with language in the form of the written word. And I think, after peeling back the layers, which are actually more complex than I’d thought at first, it comes down to a single, very basic concept. For me, writing amounts to feeling some sort of control within a universe that seems utterly unmanageable, just frightening, and filled with an unpredictable chaos impossible to restrain, one that operates well beyond any kind of reassuring logic.

When I write, I’m automatically granted this glorious control that I wouldn’t otherwise possess. In fact, I have an ability to rise above reality’s built-in havoc and turmoil, to navigate a world of my own making, shaping its contours through my words alone for a peacefulness that’s often out of my reach.

It might sound negative to have such a fierce desire to escape from established society in order to formulate a whole other realm, an environment independent of the well-known parameters we all must confront and, ultimately, live within. But to someone like me, who has struggled with a persistent fearfulness, feeling a semblance of control really matters. By assuming such an all-powerful function through my work, I can reconfigure the universe into what I need it to be, what feels right for me in the moment, as a method for understanding my experience more fully, thereby applying it to reality as a productive result. Comfort exists in that effort, particularly when fright of all kinds, now so deeply ingrained within my psyche, is always a driving force.

As a child, I didn’t feel safe, never able to relax and just be me, whatever that means in terms of my still unresolved core self. It’s taken me a long time to face this truth, to figure out what exactly caused such anxiety to influence all aspects of how I view myself in relation to the surrounding world. I’m now in the process of learning more about this side of me, discovering why that innate fear has so enormously defined my life. This search for answers from within has helped me release that intrusive judgment, the constant self-criticism that has persecuted me for so long, where I can finally accept my nature without the inner bashing that customarily follows. It’s a work-in-progress, though, where I’m finding that I need to give myself grace, to learn how to be my own best friend, which is much easier said than done.

The interesting thing about fear, though, is that it’s not purely negative, an evil obstacle that impedes productivity. In my personal experience, such agitation, an ever-present nervousness, can serve as an authentic motivator, not the type of paralysis one might assume. Although fear is usually my first response when considering an action of some sort, a step that I must take, I never allow it to get in the way of what I need to accomplish. While it is a relentless voice inside of my head, fear doesn’t immobilize me as it certainly intends. Instead, it makes me more determined.

Although I lead a fairly quiet life now, where I can work on, often struggle with, my writing, I’ve faced numerous situations that have inspired intense fear, but didn’t break me in the end. From suing an employer for sexual harassment and winning a small settlement to asserting myself to a technical union intent on stripping my editing role from a management position at a television station, where we ended up in legal proceedings, to standing up to a neighbor, a vicious, hateful bully whom I suspected of criminal activity, I’ve had my share of scary confrontations that only heightened the terror I already endure in silence. But despite that ongoing, further exacerbated fear, its presence a constant shadow within me, I didn’t acquiesce, never once allowing the perpetrators to get away with their unjust treatment of me. My pride, the utter strength of my dignity, would not permit such horrendous abuse to occur.

During these ferocious events of my life, with fearfulness always a factor in my outlook, I somehow transformed that dread, an element I’d come to know so well, into determination. The anxiety turned into a helpful guide, keeping me alert to worst-case scenarios as I proceeded to do what I viewed to be right in each situation. It motivated me to confront the injustices, not shy away from them as might be expected.

These frightening episodes have not only helped define me as a person, though, they’ve also become important material for my writing. Deepening my outlook on the world, each circumstance has informed the way that I write about the intricacies I see while weaving fragments of personal experience into these narratives. So fear, frequently a stumbling block by nature, can be used as a very constructive means for achievement. I say that as someone who has had to reconcile with its constant presence, accepting that inner response as a reality to my interactions with every situation I encounter, knowing it will always serve as a default position in each reflection.

So I guess it could be said that I write to deal with that continual fear, to make inventive sense of it instead of allowing its presence to consume all other facets of interpretation, of the ability to appreciate details beyond anxiety’s deeply embedded parameters. It’s a method of control, the best one that I know, which I always rely on while simultaneously writing to achieve mastery over a world that too often feels so turbulent, so disorderly to me.

Writing is a way to regulate my fears, to face each one with a mind for creating something artful, a product that doesn’t poison me in overwhelming negativity and self-criticism. Instead, it inspires me to view my experiences in a more uplifting light, an attitude that allows for growth, for an inner acceptance that I’ve deprived myself of ever considering before, but I’m now comprehending with great appreciation. I’ll always feel the need to generate fantasy worlds to cope as I decipher the complexities of my experiences to obtain control through a constant desire to be in charge of myself, to attan a constructive awareness of societal influences that affect me yet are well beyond my authority. Writing gives me a valuable power I certainly wouldn’t own otherwise, helping me acknowledge my fears without succumbing to them. I’m grateful for this incredible form of expression that makes me whole, that helps me see, that provides an outlet to face my fears and to define myself as fully as possible. All of these interweaving elements that seamlessly blend into my psyche, a complex combination of suppressed anxieties, a fierce aspiration for growth, a need to accept who I am with grace and patience, a longing to understand the world I live in through the creation of fictional worlds, are swirled together to explain the most important question of my life. They serve to make me keenly aware of the reasons behind why I write and why I will always, always, for better or for worse, be a writer.