Love Affair With Words

I fell in love when I was in elementary school.  And it is true what they say, you fall in love.  It is not something that you can meander in and out of.  Love is not some-of-the-time.  Love is all-time.  When you fall in love, the love that is so true that it lasts a lifetime, you fall head over heels.  You sometimes fall too fast and it may take a while to stand.  Sometimes you run into barriers during the fall that slow you down or try to detour your path towards true love.  Often when you take the plunge, it is not graceful.  You plummet towards your future.

Elementary school is the first time where you are tested for grammar and spelling and vocabulary.  You learn phonics.  You learn how to put words together and take sentences apart.  You begin to understand that many words have similar meanings and are seemingly interchangeable.  You write and read.  But for me, I loved.

I began writing, and despite my shaky grasp of the English language, I have never turned back.  I found my cadence, my rhythm.  I took the plunge.  I fell and fell and am still falling to this day.

Words are so beautiful.  They have shape and sound.  Each word has a connotation and a denotation.  Each word means something literally and much more figuratively.  They need to be read and spoken.  They demand attention.  They are not just black and white figures on a sheet of paper.  They are every feeling that I have ever had in my lifetime and infinitely more than I will ever experience.  They are full of humor, pity, love, terror, and excitement.  They are full of me, and I am full of them.

I realized that words are the most important thing to me.  It was a delicious and innocent discovery.  I began my unencumbered romance immediately.  I would write my thoughts on paper.  If I heard something that I liked or that inspired me, I would write that down too.  Listening or speaking or writing.  It did not and still does not matter to me.  It is not the act or the practice that I love; I love the words themselves.

Words are everywhere I am and in everything I do.  I feel them even more than I am witness to them.  My love for the life of words is real.  I must live in them and with them, always.