A trembling confession: fear, healing, and the courage to be seen
Even now, saying it aloud still trembles through me—
as if I were unveiling an ancient secret kept for centuries
at the bottom of a wooden chest, worn down by time.
Since childhood, I knew words could be dangerous.
In my home, I learned that whatever happened behind closed doors
had to be buried in silence,
like the roots of a tree that must never grow.
Communication was a fragile dance between what could be said
and what had to be swallowed—
and silence almost always won.
But I, rebellious in spirit,
found a sacred refuge within the pages of a notebook.
My room became a temple, and my writings, prayers.
I began to write almost as far back as I can remember—
at first in secret, like a little girl hiding sweets beneath her pillow,
and then, once I regained trust in the intimate act
of writing just for myself, I returned to it with greater fervor.
During my adolescence—
that volcanic stage where everything burns from within—
my mother’s need to know what stirred in my soul
led her to read one of my notebooks.
In her mind, it wasn’t a betrayal.
But for me, it was.
Because she turned my most intimate confessions into weapons.
She confronted me, sitting on her bed,
reading my sorrows aloud as if they were crimes.
I stood there, frozen—like a statue of salt—
watching trust dissolve like paper letters in the fire.
And so, I decided I would never write again.
But words do not surrender so easily.
They saved me once more
when I invented my own alphabet—one only I could understand—
and began writing again, this time in a secret language
that not even love could betray.
When I finally left that house,
and the echo of my emotions could no longer be silenced,
I returned to the shared alphabet.
Curiously, I began to write more in English than in Spanish,
as if that foreign tongue could offer me a new hiding place.
Today, as I write this, I realize that belief no longer belongs to me.
It served its purpose—yes—but it’s no longer true.
When thoughts crowd in,
when my heart beats with a fury too vast for my chest,
I write.
Writing is my way of not drowning.
Now, life—with its infinite irony and slow, deliberate wisdom—
has taught me that to heal, one must speak.
And more than that—one must allow oneself to be read.
That is why I am here: open, unmasked.
What I never imagined is that the whole world
would learn that I am a writer through a co-authored book
published by a press—
and even less that I’d be presenting my heart
at the Bogotá International Book Fair, 2025.
And it isn’t a dream.
It’s real.
Fifteen days until the launch.
Fifteen days until the world reads
what my heart has been writing in silence since childhood.
Am I afraid?
Yes.
Terrified—so much so that sleep sometimes abandons me.
But here I am,
writing with trembling hands,
a bare soul,
and a willing heart.
Because the time has come to reveal myself—
to say, truly and finally:
I am a writer.
Nel Duarte,
Tuesday, April 08, 2025, Calgary, AB. 4:36 am
Learn more about my journey → My Story
✨ Thank you for reading this confession. For years, I whispered it in private; now I say it aloud: I am a writer. Your presence here gives that sentence its breath and makes this declaration possible.