Words, or the Best Weapons in the World

When I write, it feels like the words pool around in my brain, form a feeling, seep into my blood and then pour out onto the page through my veins, into my fingers and out via a keyboard or pen. It sort of feels like a way forward on a foggy night – the foggy night being my brain and life. 

Some of my most vivid memories of connecting with words came from books and television. Jacqueline Wilson, Roald Dahl, and eventually, a little show called Doctor Who. All forms of it.

I started on The Bed and Breakfast Star and The Twits and very quickly made my way to Doctor Who Novels. Big, hefty, wordy books. Behind-the-scenes books. Annuals. The letters and paragraphs reached out to me and filled my mind with stars and adventures and friends. I think I felt that I lacked these elements in my outer world, and I knew that *painfully* at eight or nine years old. Books were really important to me and I read a lot of them.

A lot of my memories of books are linked to a person, my (great) Aunt Mary. When I think about those thick Who novels or charity shop Roald Dahl books, I can feel the armchair I imprinted myself into and smell the electric heaters warming her home. My home. It’s hard to know where you belong as a child but I truly and utterly felt as if the universes I explored through stories were for me, and that maybe the plane I physically existed on wasn’t. I felt like an alien.

The Doctor was an alien. The kids in the Jacqueline Wilson books were outcasts. I took the words from books and television shows and tattooed them into my psyche, but I don’t think I realised the importance of the writing itself, that this was where my support system had come from.

When I was in Year One I won a story competition. My memory is hazy, but I do remember the title and basic premise: THE RUNAWAY HAMBURGER. This was surely my first brush with writing, storytelling, with expressing my imagination through words. I only recently remembered that it had even happened. The story escapes me but I remember the feeling. The knowing. The connection with the formation of sentences and pages and feelings.

As I grew older, the outside world grew crueller and I didn’t seem to grow at all, only shy away. I burrowed myself further into the adventures of Doctor Who and didn’t want to return. I was bullied and faced a lot of trauma and as a result, my life became about survival and escape. I wasn’t even conscious of this until years later.

I didn’t notice the impact words were having on me, from the people around me. The bullies in the playground. The family members that picked me apart. The adults that spoke to me like I was unworthy of being acknowledged. To hide away from their words I chose the words of the Doctor and their companions and their stories. I chose books and television and films. I chose social media and read the sentences of strangers instead of forming connections in the world outside my phone. I wish I’d noticed the power of the words I had experienced and made my own judgement, but the more you hear something, the more you think it must be true. I wish I realised then that I could use them too.

It wasn’t until my very late teens that I even thought about writing again. I had forgotten I even knew how to do it or that it was something I enjoyed. I started a blog, wrote about Doctor Who and their adventures and regularly put words and paragraphs and posts together, something that felt almost felt like a miracle.

It awakened something in me, something I didn’t know I was missing. It was as if I had been sleeping for 19 years and the alarm in my brain had jolted me awake and the sun was shining on a blue-skied morning.

The sun doesn’t always stay out, does it? It’s not always shining. But it is always there. When I begin typing or pick up a pen to fill a journal, the sun blazes for me. The clouds slither away. There’s a little hole in my heart and when I write, it is filled. Sometimes we know what our purpose is and sometimes we don’t, but I think that if something makes the sun come out for you, you should hold on to it and never let it go. Maybe it’s because I know the impact words have had on me – and now it is my turn to re-write the story.

I’m still hanging on to the words of Doctor Who. The adventures in the TARDIS and the lessons and the stories. I think that those words, the words of the books I have read, the words from my friends during dark moments, the words from long lost loved ones – they’ve made me. They’ve shaped me into exactly who I am and they are my power. Using them is power. We could all use a little more power.

I think some might even call them a weapon. The best weapons in the world, if the weapon is to invoke change and spread joy and shape the future ahead of us.

I think words can make us good. I’ll keep writing with them and pursuing them and telling stories with them - and it would mean the world to me if you continued to read them.