Still Writing

This isn’t the end. There is no end. There’s just a woman at a kitchen table who hasn’t run out of things to say.

I’m still writing. New stories. New truths. New versions of old wounds that look different now that time has changed the light on them.

Some mornings I wake up and there’s a story fully formed in my chest like it wrote itself while I slept. Some mornings I wake up and there’s nothing and I panic because the nothing feels like going back to the silence and the silence nearly killed me.

But it always comes back. The words. They always come back. Because the well isn’t empty. Thirty-nine years of material and I’ve barely scratched the surface.

There are stories I haven’t told yet. Darker ones. Funnier ones. The ones that happened last week. The ones that happened thirty years ago and only make sense now. The ones that I’m not ready for yet but I can feel them pacing in the hallway, waiting for me to open the door.

I’ll open the door. When I’m ready. On my terms. In my time.

Because this is mine now. The story. The voice. The kitchen table. The 1am. The cold tea and the warm dog and the screen glowing in the dark.

All mine.

I don’t know how many stories there are. I stopped counting. The number doesn’t matter. What matters is the writing. The act of it. The defiance of it. The woman who was silenced for so long that the sound of her own voice still surprises her.

It surprises me. Every time. That I have this much to say. That people want to hear it. That the girl in the quiet house grew up to be a woman who fills the silence with words that make strangers feel less alone.

She wrote it down.

She’s still writing.

And she’s not stopping.