Today was hard.
I work nights in a shelter for youth who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. I woke up at 8pm and my night settled down at 1am. Five hours. In those five hours, I found out one of our missing youth’s body was found (she died of hypothermia), I had to call the police to report a domestic, I had to call for an ambulance due to someone overdosing, I had to deescalate someone who was expressing suicidal ideations, and I had to turn a crying fifteen year old girl away because our shelter can’t accept youth under sixteen.
Like I said, today was hard.
But they were all asleep by 1am, and I’ve been alone in this dark, tiny office, trying to process the events of tonight for the past four hours. I ended up turning to some ice cream and Microsoft Word. I felt immediate relief.
Then I started thinking about why I was feeling so much better. The ice cream likely helped (comfort eating ftw), but I know that writing was playing a bigger part. It has always been my coping mechanism.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m happy with my life. It’s just that my life can be hard. I have no say in that unless I change professions, but even if I had the easiest job in the world, I’m sure something else would come up to stress me out. I have no control over it.
But I have control over what I write.
I can write whatever I want with any intention. I can write to express myself, to lift my mood, to find the words I need. I can write something happy, something sad, something dramatic. While I’m a firm believer that writers allow their characters to act on their own accord, I can still place them in situations which I assume will yield the results I’m looking for. I don’t write to run or hide from my problems. I write to keep a healthy state of mind afterwards. And, you know, have fun and stuff.
– Jess
Some Words Between Friends 