Truthfully, I am in love with words. I love the way that they look, appearing on a page in front of me, gray pencil strokes against a clean white page. I love the way that they sound as they break through silence. I love the way that they travel through my head to form coherent thoughts. I love the way that they feel on my tongue. Is there anything more beautiful than language?

Even if the words themselves carry no groundbreaking meaning or significance, writing can embody truth without saying anything at all. I can feel these words lying gracefully in my head. Like a silk cloth, they are soft against my mind. I swear that if I spoke them aloud, they would melt on my tongue like chocolate.

Words float over my head in calm waves and swallow me, seeping through the surface of my skin and into my deepest subconscious. They are the closest to the truth I have ever come. They embrace me in their poetry.

We can drown in words, can’t we?

To be honest, there is a part of me that does not believe in a greater purpose within this life. I sometimes doubt the existence of a deeper, profound meaning. Still, these words envelope my thoughts and create something clearer and more meaningful. These words enfold me in their clarity. They make me feel pure.

It is a search for understanding that often motivates my writing. Sometimes it is the desire to create a world that lies outside of our own. In truth, I think that words always hold more meaning to the writer than they do to anyone else. Writing is the closest that people can come to analyzing their thoughts. My words always hold more depth to me than they do to others. After all, depth is all that I really want. Depth is what we all really want. When it comes to our souls, we all tend to see things that aren’t there.

Despite the cliché, writing really is an escape. A person can create whatever he or she wants on paper. One can create a substantial universe. It may not physically appear before someone’s eyes, but that does not make it any less real.

I can list meaningless words and create something that sounds beautiful. I can create an image that evokes an emotion that cannot be expressed. I can color this page with tears and swallow the words so that they become me. I can create a world. I can create a religion and paint a god.

Sometimes, though, I will admit that words seem hollow. There is only so much that anyone can say. It is impossible to assign meaning to a world that has no meaning. That is what sometimes gives words their emptiness. I can try to explain love, but what is love really? I can describe a beautiful scene, burn an image onto someone’s retina, conjure a tear in a person’s eye that drips down a cheek like a drop of rain, but what does it really mean?

Words hold so much more power, but there is one thing that they cannot do. They cannot create a meaning that is not there. I search to find the truth with my words, but if there is no truth to convey, my words are simply hollow.

I have accepted that, but I still continuously clutch this notebook to my chest as if it is a part of me. Perhaps it is a part of me. These words are the truth as I see it. They are burned into my heart as if by an iron. They are the thoughts that race through my head, the images that I see when I close my eyes. These words are like a pair of glasses specially designed for my eyes, defining and clearing my view of the world.

To me, words are like a safety blanket held by a child. They are a form of comfort, a provider of warmth. We all need something of a similar nature. We are all children, really, completely oblivious to the truth of the world around us. We will never know truth, assuming that there is even a truth to know.

Everyone needs something to hold onto, something to keep them warm. They need something that prevents them from shattering at the slightest pressure and that continuously haunts their thoughts. Everyone needs some form of safety blanket. For some it’s love, for some it’s family. For some it’s art, for some it’s music. For some it’s order and a structured way of life. For me, it’s writing.

Writing is one of my metaphorical safety blankets, although it is not my sole escape. I tend to be rather irregular in my methods of expression. There is just something so wonderful about watching words appear on a page. Writing induces a certain feeling of accomplishment. It is the feeling of having created something significant. Writing is something that I can depend on being able to do, however poorly.

Sometimes, we just need an escape. I have written poetry and meaningless monologues, attempting to condense the world into a few words. Compared to the size of the universe, anything written is miniscule, but that does not stop me from trying to explain the world anyway.

Still, sometimes I find myself upset by the emptiness of words. As I said before, words cannot convey a meaning that is not there. Even if there is a truth, however, words cannot express it. The truth is something too profound to be seen or touched, heard or felt, smelled or tasted. With the absence of the senses, truth can hardly be described through words in any accurate way. Maybe that is why we cannot grasp it. How can someone grasp something that is outside the comprehension of language? Perhaps truth itself is beyond our comprehension. Perhaps truth is simply a feeling.

Maybe it is the growth of a delicate flower, resolutely breaking through the cold, hard soil after a long winter.

Maybe it is the sun’s rays shining on warm skin or the touch of a breeze, cool against one’s face.

Maybe it is the first snowflake of winter floating softly downward to land on skin, melting in a matter of moments.

Maybe it is the coarse texture of a blanket as someone wraps up within it to keep warm.

Maybe it is a beautiful song, lovely and yet so melancholic that it brings tears to one’s eyes, the notes conveying a feeling that even words could not express.

Maybe the truth is light, and maybe the truth lies in the shadows.

Words might be empty, but at the same time they hold more truth than so much else. Is it possible to feel their beauty against one’s skin? I can, and the words swallow me. I am the words, and the words are me. They are the embodiment of life and the embodiment of beauty. They are the closest to truth that I have ever come.

There is so much more to words than anyone sees.