andrés ignacio torres

I lost my voice

This blog post was originally written (and intended to be read) in Spanish. I tried my best to convey the same meaning in my translation below, but your mileage may vary!

Picture of a desk. On top of it, there's a Macbook, a coffee mug, a phone and a notebook with a pen on top.

Photograph by Andrew Neel on Unsplash.

For a while, so long that I can't measure, I've felt like my voice is missing.

I don't know where I left it last time I saw it, I used it.

My fingers dance atop the keyboard, my hand grabs the pen that swipes over the notebook. And I can see the lines, the traces,the pixels that light up forming symbols that I can read.

But I don't recognize myself.

For the past few months, I've consciously grown back my reading habit, partially due to me getting a new Kobo. When I created this website, I set another goal for myself: to recover my writing habit. But this one's been way harder to do.

Even though, objectivelly, I've been practicing more than before —I've forced myself to write at least a couple paragraphs each day, about anything, like the hamster that comes back to the wheel that he's used to—, I don't feel completely comfortable with my output.

And, to be fair, I've never been. Not completely. But even within the walls of my self-doubt, I could find parts of myself engraved within the texts that I used to write years ago.

Now, if I put my words in front of a mirror, it is not me whom I see.

I find writing to be essential to my identity. I like recognizing myself as a writer, but my writing these past few years has not met my standards by far.

I'm not sure if it's because of the time that has passed, or the immense change in my circumstances and environment since 2023 —starting with the obvious: migrating to a new country, leaving behind the Caribbean sand and instead finding myself trapped within the white confines of the snowy mountains that I can see from my windows.

Something is not working.

But within this self-disagreement, I also find a wish: to improve, to be better, and to go back and find myself again within the role of a writer.

I will find the way, I will find the time.

In the meantime, I will continue pursuing my identity as a writer, just as much as I pursue all the other bits of whom I am.

And I will keep finding myself in the role of a reader, surfing endless reminders of all that's possible, of the thousands of realities that we can live, that we can buid, that we can create.