Nick Bliven, a Northern Kentucky-based writer
After my dad died suddenly earlier this year, I ended up in a behavioral health center. No phone. No music. No distractions. Just me and my thoughts, which, at the time, felt like the worst possible roommates.
Early on, I found a wide-ruled composition notebook—the kind I probably hadn’t touched since elementary school, with the black-and-white marbled cover. I started writing in it because there was nothing else to do.
I haven’t really stopped since then.
I learned that writing asks nothing of you. You don’t need an audience, a thesis, or even good handwriting. Some days, it was a short train of thought I needed out of my head. Some days, it was a poem about the ironies of life. And sometimes, it was a letter to someone I look up to that I never planned to send. The pages took everything without flinching.
I realized that music has done something different for me, too. Where writing lets things out, music lets things in. Ballads I’d heard a hundred times suddenly meant something because now I understood what words could carry. I found myself reading lyrics the way I used to read box scores—studying them, appreciating the craft. A really good songwriter takes you into their world for a few minutes. That’s not a small thing; it’s an open door.
Here’s what I keep coming back to, though.
My dad and I had an incredible relationship. And we’d usually talk about sports, mostly the Reds, Bengals, whoever was playing. I don’t say that with bitterness—those conversations were real and ours, yet we never could have had the difficult ones. There was never the opportunity, or maybe neither of us knew how to make one.
After he passed, I learned he had kept secrets from me. There were parts of himself he never let anyone see.
I’ve thought about that a lot in the quiet since then. I think a lot of men of his generation were handed the same instructions: carry it, don’t mention it, and change the subject when asked. However, I don’t want to live a life where I have to hide parts of myself. I don’t want the people who love me to find out hidden parts of who I was after I am gone.
I recognize there’s a time and place for everything—every raw emotion doesn’t need a microphone. But there’s a difference between choosing when to share and never sharing at all. One is discretion. The other is slowly disappearing.
So I write. In notebooks, on my phone, on a computer. It started in a room with nothing in it, in a notebook made for a kid learning cursive. It turns out that was enough.
If you’re a man who’s been carrying it—whatever “it” is—I’m not going to tell you to open up because that phrase has never worked for anyone. I’ll tell you this instead: buy the dollar notebook. Write one true sentence in it that you’d never say out loud. Nobody has to see it. You don’t have to feel better. Just try to get it out of your body and onto a page.
And if there’s someone you only ever talk sports with, ask them one real question the next time you’re together. You might get a surface-level answer back. Ask it anyway.
That is a real conversation I’d give anything to have with my dad. It is one I can only write now. Even so, writing it down means the conversation never has to end.
