Have you ever noticed the immense power that words have? How something can be said, even with just a few syllables, in-person, in a letter, typed, written in ink, whispered, or shouted, and with those words everything changes. Or maybe it all stays the same. Go on, or not. Stay, or go. But those words, no matter how you try to forget them, set them free, let them go, they now live deep in the folds of your skin, in the taste on your lips when you drink your morning coffee, in the inside of your eyelids when you close them to sleep. Some words stick and stay forever. They wallpaper your soul.

“We lean against railings,
describing the colors,
and the smells of our homelands,
acting like lovers.

How did we get here,
to this point of living?
I held my breath,
you said something.”

“You Said Something” by PJ Harvey
from the album, Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea (2000)
Song Of The Day – August 3, 2011

I have an insatiable need for words. A want for language that ricochets off all corners of my mind, off my ears, my lips. I always feel the deep recesses of who I am to be overwhelming, though. They threaten to over-flow. I seem to have too much to say all the time, and so much I regret not saying, too. I want to be the catalyst for all the words everyone to come spilling out for me. All over me. I need to know so much. To learn. To hear so many words. Over and over again.

I hold so many words that have been said to me, inside of me. They bleed out into so much of who I am. With each breath, each sentence I say, every word I think. The echoes of words said to me come out in how I react to things. They inform my feelings. They impact how my perspective focuses, or un-focuses. So many nights I lie in bed, sleepless, replaying so many words, over and over, in my head. I dissect them all. Too much. Evaluating them. Too much. I over-think. Too much.

I’ve always read too much into words. But it’s who I am. How I am. My own flavor of insanity, I suppose. If you want to use words to explain it.