I've been in this romance since I was able to form words, often with a small nub of a pencil in a notebook I BEGGED my mom to buy me from the local drugstore. It was brown and spiral bound, and, soon, it was filled with stories of things that never happened to me.
I told stories of my friends, how they had faced things I never had to face.
I told stories of my friends, how these horrible times turned out differently for them -- when I wrote them down.
I told stories of friendships that were kind, truthful, and deep.
I didn't talk about me that much, from what I remember, until I started to fall in love with Love itself.
I wrote pages and pages of poems and songs about the devastation of love.
The teenage / college-age longing that is visceral and anger-producing, the frustration of those who didn't see my value and how I seemed to contort myself into shapes my body wasn't made for.
And the contortion act continued until I couldn’t find my right leg and my left elbow, until I was so frustrated by the twisting of it all, I just gave up.
I gave in. I left the twisting without a backup plan, without a ‘reasonable’ way to pay bills and be ‘productive’ in a world that only wanted me to take notes, track someone’s calendar, and type quickly. A world that wanted me to be pleasant, kind, accommodating, and small.
I was stuck in a world that wanted me to be quiet.
And I wanted to scream.
image reads: As a writer, fully committing to the act of writing has been like falling in love. It's one of the most beautiful and terrifying things I have done in my life. -- Rawiyah Tariq
The Words/Worlds We Choose
In 2005, around this time, I started to write pages and pages again. I'd heard that Stephen King wrote 10 pages every day, or something like that, so I started to do that. As though acting like a writer might beckon that bliss back.
I wrote 10 pages every single day, trying to attract or coax my life back.
I was in a job that I hated and a boss who thought I was a servant at all hours of the day.
I cried so many times in my car, as I scribbled down my frustration, my desperation.
Was this the way life was always going to be?
But one day, it changed.
I remembered the stories of awfulness and wrote myself a way out.
I wrote myself from bystander to heroine, saving myself along the way.
I kept writing pages and I followed each part of The Artist’s Way, as though I were summoning myself, my writing self up from a grave it had never chosen or wanted.
I resurrected the pieces of me, strewn all over the world, and placed them on the ground to see what shape I might make now.
It was not a shape I knew as human. It was a shape I recognized as heart-formed and filled. It was risky and unknown and completely me.
And I jumped into the shape, a portal into the place of my own knowing. Trusting it would make room for me again. Trusting it would recognize me and understand me and invite me by my truest name.
Love.
Love isn't about saving, to be clear, but loving myself enough to write myself back to myself did save me.
And I find myself there again.
At a crossroads? At a memory place that asks me to remember who I have always been?
A lover, a writer, a joker (sometimes).
It is a life of terror and terrific surprises.
A life I will romance again and again.
***
And….
Soon, I will be opening my calendar to support to writers, magick makers, change makers, and other story-ous people like yourself. I’ve done this work for a number of folks over the years, but I’m ready to expand these wings, this story — reach out if this is intriguing or sounds like something for you (or someone you know).
This is both beautiful and heart-rending. May you thrive as you continue to write your own destiny. Much love.