Member-only story
The Years I Stopped Writing and What They Cost Me
How losing my voice forced me to find it again.
I didn’t plan to stop writing.
It just…sorta…happened.
One missed deadline became a month of silence. A month became a year. And before I knew it, I had built a life around the absence of something that was once like breathing — essential, autonomous, and impossible to live without.
Slowly, and then all at once, I wasn’t writing essays or books or even half-finished notes in my phone anymore. I told myself I was resting. I told myself I’d earned the right to be quiet; that I deserved it.
But the truth is, I was afraid.
I was afraid of the noise, of judgment, that maybe my words had already done what they were meant to do, and that there was nothing left to say.
When Purpose Slips
If you’ve ever stepped away from something that once defined you, you know this feeling, the unease of unrecognizable quiet. The identity you spent years building suddenly feels foreign, like clothes that no longer fit.
I told myself I was evolving, that I’d outgrown writing. But the truth is, I’d lost my purpose. I confused exhaustion for completion and mistook burnout for peace.
