I can do this.
I always think the moment I open up one of these damned
white pages that something that runs onto it must be beautiful, or passionate,
or at the very least original. But it
doesn’t have to be.
Not right now, maybe not ever. The point is that I wrote it.
Today I watched a TED talk about coming up with new
ideas. A Japanese toy inventor started
playing an idea game to help himself think of new toy ideas. A word association game. Evolution.
Neptune. Elderly. Yesteryear. Ran.
Norway. And it keeps going on
like that until you think of something you never really thought of before.
I thought, I should do that.
But who knows if I ever will.
Then I thought…just write. Write like you used to. I used to write. I used to get everything down, even publish
it, remember livejournal?
Thank God that stuff is lost in the ether somewhere, but I
realize now that I used to write journal entries, livejournal rants, school
papers, and stories. At some point I thought that if I focused all
of my energies into writing stories then there would be so much more I could do
with them. But I’m beginning to think
that’s not how writing works.
You have to get all the crap out before anything good comes
out of it. So this is where the crap
will go. All the rantings of my underdeveloped,
understimulated brain. Maybe I should
stop re-reading, over-editing, this crap stuff so I can spend all of that
energy on the things I care about.
Regardless, here are some things I’ve been thinking about:
I’ve been thinking about my High School friends. Or more accurately, the ones I don’t have
anymore. Either because I gave them up,
or because they gave me up. Regardless,
most of them are faded from my life.
I don’t speak well of High School, but lately I’ve been
thinking about a couple of people I’m sad I lost. I miss Emily and laughing so hard my abs and
cheeks hurt. I’ve still never laughed
like that with anyone else. I miss Jake
and those incorruptible hours I had with him in that stupid college art class
we were forced to take. I miss Steven
and the absolute love he showed me, when no one else that age knew what love
was. I miss his forgiving and sassy
gentleness, and the fact that I could give him any piece of information and
know it would be kept safe. I miss
Cynthia, and being able to trust someone with my writing who would love it, and
write all over it and discuss characters with me; I’ve never had anything like
that since. I miss Joseph and his laugh
and knowing that at the end of the day he was just as bad at holding a grudge
as I was. I miss a lot of other people
who deserve a word; but I’m glad to say that although these people don’t have
much of a presence in my life anymore, none of them have ever been
replaced. I think that’s important. A lesson perhaps I needed to realize—you may
have to make a calculated decision to give someone up, but it doesn’t mean the
good they did you will ever be replaced or forgotten. I hope that goes two ways. I still pray for these people to find peace,
happiness, love, success.
It doesn’t do much good to dwell on the past, but I don’t
think it does much good to trudge forward without regards to it either. I’ve been thinking a lot about that seventeen
year old girl lately, and how much she knew that I don’t know anymore. I’ve also been thinking about how glad I am
to know I’m not her anymore. A little
wiser, a little more educated, a little kinder, a little fiercer, a little more
of all the things I always wanted to be but was too afraid to take on. I know that as you grow, sometimes you
outgrow your current spaces. Others must
never feel obligated to inhabit those places with you, and you must respect
their decision to leave. But one day, I
hope that depression stops destroying people and instead starts helping us
understand each other.
That girl. What did
she want, anyway? Other than for someone to love her, and to get out of
those high school walls and feel free? I’ve
certainly had some moments of freedom, but it’s not an every-day feeling. Sometimes I think of the people in this
country who have never had a single moment of freedom. Hopelessness is all-encompassing. God, I know that feeling too and I don’t even
have a good reason for it. I remember
one day, waking up early in the morning and going downstairs to the boulangerie
across the street from the jardin du Luxembourg and getting a pain au chocolat
(even though that’s terribly fattening to do every day so I did it rarely) and
walking into the garden and sitting down on one of those green benches under
the trees in the coolness of 8am on a summer morning and eating alone and
breathing, thinking. That was freedom,
just those few moments, allowing myself to do whatever I wanted. In the last couple weeks of Paris, I cried
every night knowing that I’d found someplace that actually felt like home. That felt like freedom, even knowing it would
end. Why don’t I always live in that hour between sunrise and the day
starting?
Everyone’s freedom looks a little different, but I think
essentially it’s all anyone really wants.
But something so hard to come by must be fought for. Have I ever mentioned I believe it to be one
of the points of life? Learn to love. Fight for freedom. Those are two of my truths. And Miracles happen, or in other words, there
is a plan with your name on it.
“Ye shall be as a whale in the midst of the sea; for the
mountain waves shall dash upon you.
Nevertheless, I will bring you up again out of the depths of the sea;
for the winds have gone forth out of my mouth and also the rains and the floods
have I sent forth. And behold, I prepare
you against these things for ye cannot cross this great deep save I prepare you
against the waves of the sea and winds which have gone forth and the floods
which shall come. Therefore what will ye
that I should prepare for you that ye may have light when ye are swallowed up
in the depths of the sea?”
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