“Why do you do it?” his friend asked. “Why do you keep writing and sharing when no one asks you to?”
“If I knew, I probably wouldn’t have to write,” Ryan hesitated, thinking before continuing to speak. “I want the Goodness I feel from it. I don’t need it for me. I just want to know and see that it is there.”
His eyes fell down, studying the back of his hands as he rubbed them in thought. Their skin showed with scars: remains from a life of sports, accidents, and work; each mark a different cut, a different healing that closed again but still left sign to the wound.
“It makes me feel better. I don’t need a response from someone else. I just need to let it out. I want to show someone they matter and are special. I want to feel that I do too. We all matter to someone. Even believing that, maybe there are times we need help seeing it again. Writing gives me that, and maybe others feel the same in my expression.
Maybe I want to be known. Maybe I want to be more than a face in a room, become someone another senses when I’m near—believes they know from what it is I’ve shared—connected by a perception of goodness recognized in one another.”
He studied his scars a little more, their patterns left upon his living skin. They were all there, each with a story that no longer hurt.
Ryan’s eyes rose from his scars. “It makes me better,” he answered, and with that, Ryan’s words and rambling ended.
It makes me better. That was reason enough.