fiasco.

I’ve been sitting on a lot of words for an eternity. They weigh on my shoulders. I can feel the outlines of them making imprints in my skin.

I have always adored words. They were my earliest friends, beckoning me into new worlds that offered respite from a painful and lonely childhood riddled with feeling like an outcast and yet too observant and pensive for my own good. They taught me things about the world I was too afraid to ask and whispered hope and the promise of a world full of exploration and magic as I grew into my awkward gangly self. Many times they were the only ones to hold my hand through experiences I couldn’t speak about. These words, whether they were woven into novels or biographies or lyrics or poems or the sides of cereal boxes or etched into gravestones were a constant in a world punctuated by upheaval. Burying my face into a book meant I could take my flurry of anxious and absurd and ansty thoughts and trade them for someone else’s. They called me into bravery and told me I was not alone in my feelings and soothed fears. Sometimes I wish I could wring the pages into my mouth and swallow them deep into my belly so they become part of my being.

Maybe I have. Sometimes I think about the books I’ve read and wonder if I’ve subconsciously adapted them to weirdly fit my life and then I worry that I’m not having an original experience and I’m manipulating the moment to fit the plot of the book/short story/etc etc etc. Sorry this is just how my mind works (yes I have OCD and for your dang information John Green has it too so stop judging). Maybe I’ve swallowed so many things I wanted to say and scream and moan and whisper that the words are starting to trickle down my cheeks and following the curves of my shoulders and dripping down my tattooed arms into my fingers and here I am, typing away at 8:47pm on a Sunday night. Maybe they’re starting to ask to be written and here is my first moment in more than a decade where I’m giving them the moment to see the light of day.

I struggle a lot because words fail me, especially in moments filled with joy or grief or pain. I dig around in my head and come up empty. I find songs that express my thoughts but sometimes even those fall short. All of this muttering is me attempting to say (to maybe the three people who will read this) that I’m trying. I’ve written stories and moments and had about four books in my head fluttering around for just about forever so here I am, attempting to ascend cringe mountain in hopes of flexing an extremely atrophied muscle. I don’t even know what I’m doing. This probably is a load of jank nasty flab. But I think a lot about how Hemingway would talk about how it’s not writing but instead you’re sitting in front of your typewriter and bleeding. So maybe I can proverbially bleed onto this screen for nothing other than a cathartic release. Hopefully this won’t be used against me in court one day.

I’m going to go have a vulnerability hangover now but also smile to myself knowing I kept a promise I made to my younger self. Maybe you can come along for the ride.

Thanks for being here.