What I Wish Being a Writer Meant

I wish being a writer meant that I was emotionally stable.

That I didn't change my mind every couple days, or worse, every couple hours.

That I wasn't so sensitive and emotional that I'm able to make myself cry by just sitting around thinking too much, for too long.

I wish being a writer meant that I was unaffected.

I wish it meant that I was prone to being conscious of my health, and that I enjoy eating salad for at least one meal per day. I wish it meant that cigarettes never appealed to me, and alcohol was something I sipped gingerly on when I went to a bridal shower, or toasted my best friend's promotion, and not something that goes so well with the creative process that when people hear "writer" they generally assume "alcoholic".

I wish being a writer meant I had secrets. I wish it meant that my entire personal life and every experience I've ever had could stay safely tucked away beneath my collar bones, only given out in small excerpts to the closest of friends. Instead it means that every kiss, every heartbreak, every insult, every tear and every wound is bursting and jumping and rattling around inside me, and the only way to quiet it all down, is to write it.

And now everybody knows.

I wish being a writer was a normal job that came with a reliable income. Something a single mother could raise her babies on. More than that I wish being a writer didn't make taking an office job and kissing up to suits all day long feel so much like slowly suffocating.

I wish writing was romantic, easy, the process as poetic and beautiful as the end result {sometimes} is.

I wish being a writer meant I can always write. Whenever I want, any time, about anything I need to write about.

I wish it wasn't so depressing when I sometimes can't write.

But being a writer means that some days, I am a writer and some days, I am a normal person.

Most days, even if I am not writing, I am a writer.