Why I (Wish To) Write

This is a post that I got published on a website called Lionhart. Lionhart is a community of women who is committed to empowering and encouraging young women to recognize their worth and spread that courage into their communities. I had the honor of having a little writing of mine featured on their website. You can check it out here!

There are a lot of nights that I ask myself, why do I write? And why do I have a desire to write? Can I write?

And there is a quote I found that stuck out to me that I want to share. And, I think DeSalvo nails to the wall exactly why it is that I want to write.

"Why, then, should we write? Because writing permits the construction of a cohesive, elaborate, thoughtful personal narrative in the way that simply speaking about our experiences doesn’t. Through writing, suffering can be transmuted into art. And writing permits us to use our writing as a form of public testimony in a way that the private act of therapy doesn’t." — Louise DeSalvo

To turn our suffering into an art. Something meaningful, beautiful.

To create some sort of public testimony. A story.

 I love stories. I love hearing them --in books, in music, film -- and I love sharing the ones I've collected from the lives of others. I want to share my own story, too, but, I find my story to be the most difficult to want to tell. I have struggled with this for many years, an instance in the past most note-ably being my year in spoken word club, penning the words, yet struggling to let them leave the pages held to my chest.

And, so it's been for most of my life sense then.

With the desire to tell my story, I find that most often, I am consumed by fear.

Fear of what?

Fear of being ridiculed, alone, rejected, not enough. Or maybe even the fear of being seen as "too much", the one that I, with my heart on my sleeve, personally struggle with.

Sometimes, I sit before the screen, maybe before my notebook, and I try to convince myself that if I can just write a little fancier, if I could just chop out all the vulnerable details or wrap whatever it is I want to share with some guaranteed-to-feel-good conclusion ... that I've done what I wanted. That I've done the work of writing for me.

But I don't want to speak the common voice, or the voice that everyone may want to hear. Truly, despite how I may attempt to convince myself, I don't want to speak in the voice that is deemed only "acceptable" by the masses. But, I want to share my dreams, my fears, my sorrow, my hopes... shamelessly. I don't want to hide anymore. That is why I want to write. I don't want to hide in my fear or my shame. I no longer want to beleive that all of that which I am ashamed of defines the worth of my stories, or the stories of others that I wish to share that may parallel my own heart.

 I want to write with the knowledge that my voice and my life is valuable, that it is connected to yours in a significant way. I want to know that value in the same way as I see it for those that I encounter, those who bless me with their honest lives, although they may appear as an unlikely hero to the themselves and to the world.

I want to write about the poor in spirit and share the stories of those who think, too, that their story is not worth telling, because it is in those that I see a glimpse of me. I find their stories significant. I hope to share mine within the humble realization of my own weakness, my own desire to be part of something greater, to belong, to have worth.

I want my writing to be a place where folks can come as they are, just as I wish to come as I am. I know that for me, sharing what I write, will be a journey, one that has been long meaning to happen. I will experience fear, but now, I want to choose the courage to leap above that fear. And I will have courage, because I want to believe that fearless honesty is all it takes for writing to be good and true.

“Good writ­ing is hon­est, alive. The more hon­est and alive our writ­ing, the more we show our­selves. The more we show our­selves, the greater dan­ger we’re in. The greater dan­ger we’re in, the more scared we are. Hence fear is a marker on the path toward good writ­ing.” -- Ralph Keyes // The Courage to Write

Friends throw you up in the air and help you soarrr!!!

The past year I’ve learned that humility is a quality that I really admire in a friend. Friendship is a wonderful opportunity. And, I’m also learning so much about how much I’ve been learning about what occurs in a friendship.

I also really need to remember that it’s absolutely okay to need encouragement, and that it’s okay to find yourself weak in certain enviroments. I find that I end up having meltdowns when I isolate myself and I tell myself that I am weak because I can’t remain strong by myself all the time. Truthfully, I have felt like a failure the past few weeks sense I’ve been back home because I find it hard for me to be encouraged and remain strong when I have no one who really encourages me in my day to day struggles here (I kind of feel the way I did before I left for college). I’m really sick of beating myself up, and so, I’m really thankful for friends that can recognize the fact that I’m beating myself up when I fail to see it in me, friends that despite the distance i can share with them what’s been going on in my brain and heart, friends who have the patience to allow me to externally process my thoughts.

I’m really thankful for those folks who will listen and speak with no judgement on their tongue because they know how it goes. They know what it’s like to be on the verge of a break down or to be weak, even if they don’t experience it in the same way, or as much as I do.

I think my favorite thing about friendship is that I often find myself, when with a really encouraging friend, saying to myself, “I want to be insert-friends-name-here when I grow up”, in other words, I find myself saying “I want to be able to lift another person up the way they encourage me”. The encouragement I receive from a whole-hearted person makes me feel like I can soar!

So now, looking back, I find it so strange: I think to myself, how could I have simple settled calling people who would just tear me down and be impatient with me and bail out quickly “my friend?” I had thought when I was younger that friendship was just about having someone who likes the same thing as you or someone to go to the mall with all the time. I know that a friend by no means is perfect and has weakness just like the other, but, I began to see a huge difference between fickle folks who spent time with me because they thought I was cool for liking certain things, and the people who, despite our differences and disagreements, would stick with me and encourage me.

It continues to blow my mind that there is such a beautiful thing as friendship in the world of human relationships!

And so, now that I’m starting to learn more about what friendship is like, I really just want to be a good friend as my friends are to me. I still have a lot to learn, but they inspire me so much to be a whole-hearted person and friend. I think maybe friends are supposed to inspire each other.

Also, twelve more days until I leave for Philadelphia! PHRWOAAARRRRRR!!!

A summer far from "yolo", far from "glamorous".

Right now, the sky looks like an orange creamsicle and a grape creamsicle melting into each other, the colors possibly diffusing in an unsual way because of the low placement of the clouds in the sky, now drifting away from today's false threat of rain...

(I've been trying to figure out why I have been so tired lately. And then I remember that I'm always surprised by the fact that I never remember what my PMS symptoms are like, which explains a lot of things.)

I'm blown away by the fact that it's already eight days into August: the last stretch of the summer. This second half of my summer has had me feeling like i have missed out on anything eventful and exciting during this period of time. It seems like most folks identify their summers with the constant best friends they spend time with and the endless numbers of adventures they pile into. My summers are no such summers, and at times, I wonder if the lack of resemblance between their vacation and my own implies that something is wrong with me. Why isn't my life a huge adventure during my time off?

I've come to ponder that maybe that's a problem with the media and Facebook: they provide an unrealistic expectation of what a summer vacation should be for young folks. You begin to think that every day and night should be spent with your besties, possibly meeting some stranger that you fall in love with while you stare off into the distance of some desert highway and plunge under the night sky into the waters of a hidden rock quarry only the locals of a small mid-western town know of -- complete with having no one above the age of twenty-four in sight!

My life isn't like that at all. Instead, I've been sassed by boys who automatically (and immaturely) friend-zone me when they get uncomfortable sharing breathtaking and intimate sights with a girl they're likely to never be interested in, assuming that all such moments should be spent with a love interest. Instead, I've been long ignored by high-school peers who wrote in my year book that we'd hang out all summer. My summers of long ago were days spent on my bed writing of fantastical journeys in and to other worlds when I wasn't soaked in tears of loneliness. And my summers now are car-less, jobless and driver-licensceness at nineteen with the addition of parental financial dependency and a 5-year old to babysit with while they're at work.

My life isn't at all like "they", the media and society, say it should be. You know: all the "you're still young!, you should be having fun"'s from clueless, older strangers that momentarily make me feel like I'm less of an accomplished young adult for not living up to their idea that every ninteen year old has to be partying it up "yolo"-style every night.

My life isn't like that at all. Not this summer. And probably not any summer. Surely, there must be something wrong with me, because society says so...

And yet, there are days where I'm sane enough to remember that there really isn't something wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with me for experiencing seasons of monotony and waiting and discouragement and doubt.The one thing this makes me is normal. The other thing it makes me is human.

And the best part of remembering that there isn't anything wrong with me, is that then I can remember the beautiful highlights of this summer when I'm not constantly longing for an insatiable more. I can remember when a friend of mine surprised me with dinner, a sleepover and the beach for my ninteenth birthday. I can remember the delicious malt that I made and later devoured at my training session at Leopold's only to later get my first official sugar high. I can remember the heart to hearts and laughter shared with my temporary roommate in Savannah. I can remember the trip to the beach, playing in the sea with my mother and the nights she tells me how much she loves her childhood. I can remember the dancing and singing and awkward memories and beautiful reunions that occured at the second annual Wild Goose festival. And I can remember how this summer, i've thought more about writing: how I want writing to be part of my journey in being vulnerable and maintaining that vulnerability, as well as getting the practice to later write stories to share with folks around me. All those beautiful things are placed back into my memory when I no longer am fretting so much over how my summer "should be".

On top of that there probably won't be another time like this time. In what other day probably next year will I be trying to write while distracted with the relentless rambling and pursuit for attention from my baby sister? Right now, I may be desiring to devise some sort of escape plan, but, it's strange to think that maybe someday I'll look back on this and laugh at it all, just like my twin and I laughed today over some silly stories and drawings we found in an old Yu-Gi-Oh! notebook we filled during a long summer in Panama years ago. We were possibly dead bored then, and yet I miss those days. Maybe I will miss this, too.

So my summers are far from our current youth culture's "yolo" ideals and far from glamorous. Still, if I only live once, I'd like to think that without the mundane and sadness, we eventually would become dulled to each experience that surrounds us. If I only live once, I'd think it wise to embrace every moment in my life as apposed to only those that would be deemed likeable on Facebook.

I'd like to think even that every dull day could be redeemed with a willing heart, that maybe seasons of slowness such as this can be redeemed when you have the courage to admit that you yearn for something memorable and energizing on this day.

The monotony may continue, but to your surprise, you may even then look up and out to notice the beauty of an orange and grape creamsicle puddle expanding and contracting in the sky above.