Why I Stopped Writing

For a long time, I thought I had lost the habit of writing or what we call as hitting a writer’s block.

That’s the easiest explanation, after all. Life got busy. Work happened. Responsibilities multiplied. The days became faster and somehow smaller at the same time. Writing slowly slipped between the cracks until one day I realized months had passed without finishing a single piece.

But the truth is, I stopped writing because I could no longer hear myself clearly.

Earlier, writing used to feel natural. I would observe something small, like a stranger in a cafe, a rainy evening, an unfinished conversation, and words would begin forming around it on their own. There was curiosity in the way I looked at the world back then.

I think people imagine writers stop writing when inspiration disappears. But sometimes you stop because the emotions become too large and too unorganized to fit inside sentences. You carry grief for so long that even language starts avoiding it.

So I stopped. Intentionally. I just slowly stopped opening the medium. Stopped staying with my thoughts long enough to understand them.

And after a while, not writing becomes a new habit.

What scared me most was not the absence of writing. It was the absence of observation. I stopped noticing things. Or maybe I noticed them but no longer believed they were worth turning into words.

The cafe series ended because I decided not to go to that same cafe again.

Letters to Duggu remained unwritten. And there is still so much I want to share with her.

And life continued anyway.

That’s the strange thing about losing a creative part of yourself. The world does not pause to acknowledge it. Nobody calls to ask why you stopped. Your bills still arrive. Your coffee still gets cold. Your friends still send reels and memes, and birthday wishes. Outwardly, everything functions.

But internally, something goes quiet.

I don’t think I want to write the way I used to.

Earlier, I wrote from observation and the place of pain & sorrow. Now I want to write from understanding.

Understanding of what remains after people leave.

I think age does this to you, or maybe heartbreak does. Maybe solitude sharpens certain corners inside you.

And maybe that’s why I’m returning now.

I think I finally have enough unanswered questions again.

And writing, for me, was never about having answers anyway.

It was always about sitting honestly with the things I didn’t understand.

Day 1/101

~ A

Home, Rohini