Back to Saturday’s writer’s group and (part of) the Valentine’s weekend that rocked my world. In a cozy apartment we curl up on couches and chairs, settle into the afternoon with a fluted glass of Prosecco, pens and pads at the ready. Outside the large bare windows, snow lazily filters, thin and unremarkable.

With close to half our usual group absent, we who made it were proud of ourselves, and the apartment owner’s exuberance at each of our arrivals set the scene for an intimate and open atmosphere quickly adopted. For reasons I did not know (and am still not sure of) the perfect storm of being with my boyfriend the night before on Valentine’s Day, seeing the play Beautiful – which mimicked my life in ways that hit me hard and the writer’s group meeting, bore a draining tube into my well protected heart allowing excesses of old to pass through bypassing my brain. The feeling was alien, healthy and emotional.

After 30 minutes of catching up our first prompt is: Sometimes I am intoxicated by writing...In the 10 minutes allotted, this is what I write.

Sometimes I am intoxicated by writing. An idea will gel, my fingers tap words on the keyboard and I am unstoppable. Before I reread, before I edit my grammar and vocabulary, I am a mildly manic maniac intoxicated by words, ideas and expressions.

Then there are those times when I am NOT intoxicated by writing. When I sit still as brick before my computer screen staring at a blank Microsoft Word page, daunted by the task before me. Emptied, uninvolved, disconnected.

But, then there are times I HAVE to write down my ideas which, at that moment, I see as brilliant. The phraseology of my sentences, the topic of which I speak, the breath of song within. There are times when writing takes hold of my soul and I fly, hardly having to think. Words bubble up from a well of depth related memories and I am running at a gallop – pages moving quickly beneath my hooves.

The feeling is one of freedom as wind whistles through my hair and my eyes are wide. My mind is a step ahead of the rest of me and my fingertips race to stay in sync. It is in these moments that I break through the wall of me, (this is where my voice got shaky, breaking through the wall of me held power) I open boundaries and visit the foreign that feels familiar. I follow my thoughts fearlessly, naked in my vulnerability. I am somewhere else.

Life gets bigger to include all of me and I accept this. Before I judge, before I worry about what another thinks, before I become self-conscious – I am simply where I am, in the moment, with my expression.