Embracing melancholy as part of my nature, not something to be denied or relegated to the dark stifling depths of who I don’t want to be is probably the most difficult thing to share.

This is the area from which my style of writing comes from, the most authentic tone as I ponder life’s vagaries. It is this part of me that writes passable prose and the rare poem or two. It is this part of me that keeps those poems private feeling shame of the voice within me. It is this part of me that paralyses me, faced with a blank page, the unformed thoughts, unable to put them into words raging within me, never seeing the light of day to be forever locked away by my inner critic.

Embracing melancholy is what enabled me to write this piece, without stopping, allowing the words to spill from my consciousness to my fingers to this page.

I haven’t yet found a language for my melancholy.

It’s not a sadness it’s not depression. It’s a stirring dissatisfaction with the present, the status quo, of things that could be different, of my role in changing them and the eventual acceptance that I’m not able to change everything…