22. The Speech I Hope I Never Have to Rewrite!

Somewhere inside me, there has always been a stage.

Not a famous one.

Not necessarily a crowded one.

Just a place where I could finally stand without apologizing for existing.

Long before I published a book, I imagined that moment.

I imagined holding its weight in my hands.

Looking at a room full of strangers.

Taking a breath.

And speaking.

Not because I wanted applause.

Because I wanted to know that I had remained long enough to reach that day.

Over the years, I have rewritten many things.

Poems.

Letters.

Pages that no longer sounded honest.

Sentences that belonged to an earlier version of myself.

Rewriting is part of becoming.

It is how writers listen more carefully to their own voice.

But there is one speech I hope I never have to rewrite.

Not because it is perfect.

Because I hope the person standing behind the microphone is still recognizable to the person writing these words today.

Success has a strange way of changing people.

Sometimes gently.

Sometimes without their noticing.

The world begins asking different questions.

What is next?

How many books have you sold?

What prize did you win?

How many people know your name?

These are ordinary questions.

I understand why they are asked.

But they have never been the questions that kept me awake at night.

The questions I carry are quieter.

Have I remained honest?

Have I stayed kind?

Have I remembered why I began writing in the first place?

If one day I stand before readers, I hope I do not speak as someone who has forgotten silence.

I hope I remember the rooms where these pages were born.

The nights when writing felt less like a profession and more like breathing.

The mornings when finishing a paragraph felt like enough.

I hope I remember that books are not trophies.

They are conversations.

A reader is not a number.

A reader is another human being trusting you with part of their inner life.

That trust should never become ordinary.

I hope I never become so comfortable with being heard that I forget what it felt like to wonder whether anyone ever would.

Memory is a form of gratitude.

I want to keep mine.

There are dreams we chase because we want recognition.

There are other dreams we chase because they help us remain ourselves.

Publishing this book was never about proving that I was extraordinary.

It was about proving that silence had not won.

If I ever forget that...

then I will have to rewrite the speech.

I hope I never do.

I hope the words I imagined years ago still feel true.

Not because my life remained unchanged.

It won't.

But because the reasons for writing remain unchanged.

To tell the truth.

To reach another human being.

To remind someone they are not alone.

To leave behind something honest.

If those reasons disappear, no success could replace them.

I have often imagined thanking the people who believed in me.

But there are many I will never be able to name.

The strangers who chose kindness.

The readers who found pieces of themselves inside my pages.

The people who unknowingly interrupted despair with ordinary compassion.

Every book belongs to more people than the author's name suggests.

I hope I remember that.

There is another reason I hope never to rewrite that speech.

Because rewriting it would mean I had become someone who no longer recognizes the person who wrote this book.

I do not want that.

I hope future versions of me continue learning.

Continue changing.

Continue growing.

But I hope they never become embarrassed by the person who wrote from uncertainty instead of certainty.

Who wrote while life was still unfolding.

Who chose honesty over performance.

If one day I stand before a room full of readers, I hope they do not meet a man who has escaped every question.

I hope they meet someone who never stopped asking them.

Someone who still believes literature is not about having the final word.

It is about keeping the conversation alive.

Perhaps that is the speech I have been writing all along.

Not one delivered from a stage.

One lived quietly, page after page.

And if that day finally arrives...

I hope I step up to the microphone, look at the people who have shared this journey with me, and realize there is only one thing left to say.

Thank you.

Not for reading my words.

For reminding me that they had somewhere to belong.

— Jean T. Hatoum

Author of I Wrote So I Would Not Fade and J’ai Écrit Pour Ne Pas M’effacer

Thank you for giving my silence a place to land.

If these words felt like home, the rest of the map is in the book.

And if you are able to, supporting my journey helps me afford the medication that keeps my own fractured ember burning.

http://linktr.ee/Jean.Hatoum

I’m not finished surviving out loud. 🕊️



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