It’s hard to describe the feeling of seeing a blank screen in this context again. Blogging. It’s 2014 again, and all I’m worrying about is graduating and being consumed by 20-year-old angst. As I sit here, I’m still that 20-year-old. In many ways, I’m still looking for the same things 20-year-old me was looking for, but 30-year-old branded. Like, cheddar, but aged.
What am I doing here? In the simplest way I could explain – I’m chasing the high of nostalgia and committing to something that I used to do for myself, something that made me not necessarily happier, but lighter. I’ve been sort of mindlessly walking through this era of loneliness and I’d like to believe writing here will result in something akin to the connections I was able to make back at the peak of when I was bared, free and, in the recesses of my mind, I shudder to say, authentic.
Authenticity. What does that even mean, to be authentically yourself? I’m not sure when it happened, when it started to become difficult for me to put my thoughts and feelings into words. For the longest time, tucked away in my wallet was a little laminated note from my high-school English teacher that said, “You have the gift of the written word.” I’d treasured that note. My heart had formed itself around that note like it was my heart that laminated it, and any time I had doubted if I could properly write out what I wanted to say, I took it out from the pockets of my veins and I felt seen. And I wrote.
I wrote because I knew I could, because I knew there would be someone who would read it, see it, and see me. I want to be seen, simply, in the way that I have put myself in front of you. I want to feel again what it’s like to tuck a note into my heart, deep enough that the muscle stretches the way a well-loved sweater does.
Some interesting recent things:
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