Write About Yourself

Recently I’ve been trying to get better at writing. I’ve been attempting to see if I’m actually any good at this thing. I’ve been sitting with blank pages, cappuccinos, and a lot of spiraling thoughts. I won the Young Writers award in 3rd grade. We were asked to write about what we wanted to be when we grew up. I jazzed the judges with shining pages that detailed the closet raiding sessions I would perform in my mom’s room. I romanticized the beginning, middle, and end of my story gracefully concluding it with something no better than a “happily ever after.”

I’ve said this before, talked about it in depth, but I’ll say it again. It’s always been easier for me to just not care. Better yet, pretend I don’t care if I’m afraid of being bad at it. Unless we’re talking about running. That is the one thing I will never be good at, nor care about, as long as hell doesn’t freeze over. If you have ever been on a soccer team with me, you can attest. Anyway, I think I kind of got that way with my writing. It was just always something I could do, not something I worked at. Despite every run-on sentence and improper use of semicolons, it came easy to me and it was my natural response to anything that was happening in my life. Journals, captions, academic papers, I was always told… I was a writer. I let my 3rd grade award validate me for the next decade without ever really trying to explore that so-called talent.

So here I am, trying to write. They say the hardest thing to write about is yourself. I already believe them. I guess I’ll start with what I know. My favorite color is gray, except I rarely respond with that when asked. I’m often afraid to put myself out there, and even more scared of standing up for myself. My mother did not raise me this way, I’m not sure how I fell into this. I feel overwhelmed by how many things I love in this world - like I may not have time to watch all of my favorite Emma Chamberlain vlogs as many times as I want to, or that I won't even scratch the surface on all the undiscovered indie boy bands I can claim as a personality trait, or that I’m running out of time to wear all of my coolest shoes. What’s with that? It’s undeniable that we’re running out of time, we always have been.

Well that last sentence was dark. Guess my tendency to get existential when writing happens quicker than I thought… noted. I’d say this whole write about yourself thing is going pretty smoothly, aren’t you glad you started reading? It’s quite the toss up of which version of me you’ll get on any given day - will she overshare for 50 minutes on end or will she shrug you off with a mumbled “I’ll be back later.” Who’s to say? Most of the time, I don’t even know.

Back to me. As if it wasn’t already there. You *may* have picked up by now that I’m painfully sarcastic. Giving a smart aleck answer has been one of the greatest joys in my life since the time I could talk. When things got really crazy at home in middle school and my dad had caught me in yet another tall tale (as I liked to call them), he would give me an extremely thorough and theatrical reprimanding speech then ask me if I understood. Without fail, every single time, during this era of rebellion, I’d answer “yes ma’am.” From there, we would go racing back to square one, sometimes even deeper. Maybe I do stand up for myself after all… just in unconventional ways.

A page and a half in. I’m warming up to it now, in the flow if you will. It’s not so bad. I’m on auto-pilot by this point. It’s reminding me of arguably the main reason I love writing. For the past twenty minutes, I haven’t been here. Here, as in lying in my twin bed with fake tan stained sheets and under my sorority house roof in the thick of the semester. Instead, I’ve been quite literally anywhere but here. It’s only now that I’m realizing what time it is, how my eyes are burning from being behind a screen all day, and how the night has gotten away from me yet again. I can never tell if I truly wish there were more hours in the day. Ask me tomorrow.

I think back to all of the years I wished to be anywhere but where I was. My childhood room, a small town, a sixteen year old. Writing was always a way out of my situation, my mind, my location. I guess I can take comfort in knowing that some things never change. So, I guess to write about yourself is to write about why you write. Looks like we both learned something new about me.

Until next time,

MM