Just write the one true thing. 

A few weeks ago someone said to me, “Sometimes there’s a voice in your head that doesn’t need to be explained.” 

There are a number of voices in my head that can’t be explained, but the one that doesn’t need to be explained and wouldn’t quit this morning kept saying, “Write the one true thing. Just write the one true thing, every day. That’s it. Just write the one true thing.” Over and over and over again.  

This is the one true thing. This is the thing that broke me open again back then. But it’s also the thing that makes me feel whole. It’s the thing I keep coming back to whenever I feel the need to get back to my core. My foundation. My point of origin. 

And it’s the thing that got me back to the truest version of myself. The one who writes, and the one who runs, daily.

It’s so very simple, and so very impossible sometimes, to be that person. And it’s seemingly impossible to do them at the same time. Writing, to me, was always accompanied by two in the morning, or four in the morning, and a couple (several) drinks. Running is now the thing that gets me up at four in the morning. And keeps me far healthier. One drives me mad, one keeps me sane. They do both in turn, I suppose. But they feel like breathing. And when I suppress one or the other too long, things get out of balance, they tighten, and start to feel so very far away from the one true thing. 

“You must do the thing you think you cannot do,” said Eleanor Roosevelt.

“You must not ever stop being whimsical,” said Mary Oliver. 

“And you must write the one true thing,” said the voice in my head that need not be explained.

That’s it.