I Used To Know How To Write

I used to know how to write.

I say that sentence often now, usually quietly, usually to myself. Sometimes it feels like a joke I don’t quite understand. Other times it feels like a confession. As if I am admitting to a crime I don’t know how to undo. I used to know how to write — as though writing were a place I once lived, a room I knew how to enter without knocking.

Back then, it was easy. Not easy in the careless sense, but easy in the way breathing is easy when you are not thinking about it. The words came because they wanted to. Because they trusted me. Because they recognised my hands. There was a rhythm to my sentences that I did not have to search for. It lived in me. It moved when I moved. Writing felt like music I had already memorised. Like water finding its way forward without needing permission.

I used to know how to write.

Now I sit in front of pages that do not open. I feel the words gather somewhere inside me — not absent, never absent — just suspended. As though they are waiting for something I have not yet given them. They stay lodged in my throat, hot and uncomfortable, like yam swallowed in a hurry, like something that demands to be felt before it can pass. I know what I want to say. That is the cruel part. I know. But knowing no longer translates into movement.

I used to know how to write.

There was a time when my writing felt necessary. When it came from places that were raw and exposed and desperate to be named. Certain themes held me then. Certain wounds. Certain questions. I wrote from inside them, not about them. And people noticed. They said beautiful things. Dangerous things. They told me my writing was rare, that it shimmered, that it stayed with them. They compared it to precious stones, to things dug from the earth with effort and blood. And I let myself believe them, because the writing felt true. Because I was telling the truth as I knew it then.

But life changes quietly.

You wake up one day and realise you are no longer standing in the same pain. The questions that once burned now only warm. The ache that once demanded language now sleeps. And no one tells you what happens to a writer when her suffering evolves into something less dramatic, less urgent, less willing to perform.

I have outgrown the themes that once held me.

Not triumphantly.

Not cleanly.

Just… slowly.

And now I feel stranded.

Because my idea of myself — my identity as a writer — was built around those seasons. Around that voice. Around that urgency. And without it, I do not know where to begin. I feel ordinary in a way that scares me. Mediocre in a way that feels unforgivable. As though depth only counts when it hurts.

I look at other writers now and I admire them sincerely. I do. I smile and listen and read. Sometimes I say, I used to know how to write, and it sounds casual enough that no one questions it. As if I am talking about a childhood hobby. As if I am not mourning something that once felt inseparable from my body.

What do you mean, you used to know how to write?

What kind of sentence is that?

I used to be a writer.

I used to be very good.

I used to trust my voice.

And now I hesitate before every sentence, afraid it will expose how far I am from who I used to be. Afraid it will prove that the magic is gone. Afraid that what remains is not enough.

I miss writing.

Not the praise. Not the comparisons.

I miss the intimacy.

The private understanding between me and the page.

The way the words used to meet me halfway.

I used to know how to write.

Now I am standing inside a silence that does not explain itself.

And maybe this is the part no one prepares you for — the moment when writing stops being something you do and becomes something you must slowly reintroduce yourself to. Without certainty. Without guarantees. Without the comfort of old themes to carry you.

I don’t know how to write the way I used to.

But I am still here.

And the words are still here too.

Waiting.

~Emma🦋