Seeking Solace In Writing

Neeha Fathima
3 min readMar 12, 2022

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I have always been fond of literature and words, and it still fascinates me how people can use words to write such beautiful pieces. When I was younger, a now distant relative gifted me a diary. A journal of sorts. It had Disney princesses all over it, and it had a case with a lock, so no one could peek into my diary. I treasured that diary very much. Although I wasn’t very fond of princesses, I loved that I could write anything and everything into a book and it would just be between me and my diary.

I obsessively wrote in the diary, I wrote about my experiences, I wrote about school and my friends, and I protected it with all my might. That diary accompanied me for a good part of my childhood, and it was essentially the beginning of my interest in writing.

Moving forward I didn’t write to my diary as much after I started Secondary school and picked up the habit of writing during my high school years again and it continued thereafter.

Every time I felt the world burdening me, I would turn to one of my journals and write. And although writing doesn’t really help everyone, it is a pretty popular method of coping.

On a daily basis, there are things that are left unsaid, things that you can’t share with anyone in your immediate circle, and things that seem too chaotic, or too extreme to talk about, and can’t be shared with people around you.

Life just happens, we’re just existing in that time and space, we live our lives in a rush, and there’s no slowing down. We don’t process most things that occur to us, because we’re so busy.

Journaling or pouring down your thoughts, no matter how silly, how strange they are, will give you that window to come back every now and then, and reflect on your life and where you’re going wrong.

We mirror so much of what we see, that we do not realize why or what we’re doing anymore, and those little moments where you fully feel like yourself are often found in solitude. Writing is an art form that doesn’t cater to anyone but the writer themselves. Writing is only a hard copy of the millions of unprocessed thoughts that are archived in the back of our minds.

Where sharing your thoughts with an empty book in private can be pretty relieving, sharing your thoughts out in the open, for the whole world to see & judge can be a little nerve-wracking,

The Moral quandary to put out things that may or may not instigate a certain route of thinking in people sometimes is a little too intense to deal with. You’ll never know when you’ve hurt someone’s feelings or perhaps pushed someone to relive their traumas through the things you write.

But even in the most bizarre forms of writing, every reader does interpret your words in a way that relates to their life and holds meaning in their situation. And that is the beauty of it. No one will ever know the true meaning of your words, it will always be between you and your empty canvas.

A pen and a piece of paper can go a long way with making one feel at home. The truest and most honest practice of revealing yourself starts with you.

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Neeha Fathima
Neeha Fathima

Written by Neeha Fathima

UX Designer, psychology enthusiast, part-time philosopher and bibliophile. 🌻