Let Me Speak My Mind
1am
For a long time I had been drawn to writing because it felt like I could write just about anything in this world. I could translate my thoughts to pen and paper, and then I could just freely share them with the world. They may not necessarily have been masterpieces, sure. But they were mine. They were my own.
I wasn’t good with words. I wasn’t good at voicing my opinions out loud for people to hear. After all, thinking is an entirely different skillset from sharing your thoughts out loud. So I used actual words. Real, written words. I used pen and paper. I used them to talk about anything and everything that resided in the deepest, darkest corners of my mind. And I could share them, freely. I could share my stories, my thoughts, my emotions, to an audience who resonated with me, and who shared my feelings and emotions. I thought I could finally find like-minded people who liked my work and thought the way I did.
At least, that was what I’d initially hoped for.
Now I realise I was incredibly...naïve, to think that the writing world was like that, to think that everyone wanted the same.
You see, I’d tried to submit a story to the newspaper. I wanted to get my name out there, to get my thoughts out there, to let people see what I really thought. about this hopeless world order, about the hypocritical nature of people, about how humans worked destructively in large units, actively, though unknowingly, working towards burning our world to the ground.
Then, a few weeks later, I received a letter, telling me my work had been denied. The reason: “Thematically inappropriate.” Nothing to do with language. No problems with writing style. The only issue was that the subject matter was arbitrarily decided by divine forces as “unfit for publishing”.
So this is how our world works now. Anything that goes against public opinion or is “too bold” will be censored into oblivion, taken off the face of this Earth, never to be seen by anyone. And we just have to accept it. Right?
Wrong.
We don’t have to accept it. I’m not going to.
Aren’t words for self-expression? Aren’t they for us to share our opinions freely? Aren’t they for us to put our own thoughts, our own points of view, into a tangible form of expression for others to see? Where, then, has that gone? How have we gone from freedom of expression to…this?! How did society decide that they were content with higher powers deciding what they read, that they were content with already inadequate words being limited even further?
I won’t stand for this. Words are meant to be shared. Not to be bottled up, not to be kept to oneself.
So, I ask one thing from the world. Stop this nonsense. Let us share what we want to share. Let us say what our minds want to say.
Let me speak my mind.