Writing – Is It Cathartic?

By Radical Rhymes

Is writing cathartic? I believe it is for many people. They seem to be able to expel rage and despair simply by putting pen to paper or digit to keyboard.

I have numerous friends and acquaintances who keep diaries or journals, and every entry has precise meaning and intense significance.

Speaking for myself, I’m not sure that writing has those same magical qualities.

There was a time when I believed that what I wrote mattered. Not so much for my emotional well-being or existential survival, but for other people and society as a whole. As a young academic I so desperately wanted everyone to identify the huge unfairness woven through our systems. If we kept writing and speaking about it, I hoped, then eventually we would be heard.

It didn’t take long for that naivety to dissipate. And perhaps that was a good thing? Partly because it was never going to make a difference, and because there was that narcissistic self-regard sewn into it. Although my narcissism tends towards the negative not the positive.

For a while now I’ve been writing poetry that I’ve been sharing through social media. Much of it has personal meaning, and, I hope may have spoken to a few about the need for resilience, but acknowledging all the time that despair looms large.

But…

Most of that writing has been extrinsic. Most of it has been a leaking out of what’s inside for wider consumption. Most of it.

However, today I wrote this:

Rooms

They stranded me inside their rooms,

And those became my waking tombs.

No freedom without wrenching fear,

The terror grasping, ever near.

I can’t escape, I know that now

And where would I go anyhow?

These rooms endure until the end,

I have no faith, so why pretend?

This HAS been cathartic. It speaks to the walls that have penned me in my whole life, and of the horrors that exist beyond them. This is a release of sorts and now I need to find the peace that awaits me.

I won’t be writing any more.

Radical Rhymes is a professional artist working with a range of media – predominantly animal/human portraits and landscapes – including, most recently, hand painted furniture. You can see his work on Instagram Radicalrhymes1969 or on Twitter @RhymesRadical.

For commissions, please contact him on Twitter via Direct Message or by email at: radicalrhymes@outlook.com His work is also available to buy on Etsy