Write(r)
When I was a kid I wrote stories about tiny people in hard hats living in the stoplights. I drew portraits of my stuffed animals. I had a tape recorder and I would pretend to be Kermit the Frog reporting on Sesame Street. If I couldn’t find anyone to interview I’d play all the parts. My sister and I built elaborate homes for our Barbies complete with backstories for each doll only to abandon actually playing. I wasn’t concerned about if someone would like what I created in those glorious days. I was in it for the process.
When the hell did that change?
As an empath out of the womb, I’ve always been aware of other people and the energy they give off. Even while I was busy taking on responsibility for everyone’s emotions, I still felt free to create as a kid. I was attached to the experience over the outcome. Once I hit puberty, I could feel other people’s perceptions of me. My awareness of how other people were aware of my body began to inform how I thought I should show up in it.
The free creator started dying in middle school and flickered out by the time I graduated from college. I felt pressure to perform as an adolescent and young adult. I internalized everyone’s perceived expectations. I turned into a praise junkie—the A, the pat on the back, the gold star, the cookie. I wanted to be the best. Then I would be worthy. I perfected being visible in body only. Keeping the tender parts tucked away. The older I got the more my creativity became about meeting expectations, making money, and accolades—anything that designated achievement.
Writing is my creative outlet of choice and I’ve been doing it ever since I could. I process my world through writing. I am at home in my body when I write. I don’t have any external achievements that demonstrate to society that I am a writer. At least, not the kind of writer I would like to be. I have yet to publish a book or be published in highly regarded journals. I’ve worked as a marketing writer which is a kind of writing that comes easily but brings little satisfaction. Each of those jobs was just one disappointing reminder after the next that I wasn’t a real writer. I put measures and benchmarks on the title and decided I wasn’t worthy of the moniker. I never called myself a writer.
“If you write, you’re a writer.” Roxane Gay tells me in her Masterclass. She is smart, insightful, talented, and accomplished; who am I to argue? In September 2020, I started a creative writing class. It’s a class I have wanted to take for several years and it is the kindest thing I’ve ever done for myself. I finally showed up for the little writer scribbling furiously inside of me. I almost believe I am a writer. (I changed my Instagram bio so, it must be true, right?)
I try to write every day. Not because I’m proving something. It’s not a practical move. It’s one of self-care and self-love. Not a spa-day kind of self-love; a self-knowing kind of self-love. Whether for hours or minutes, writing allows me moments of sanity and clarity in a way that is unreachable by any other means.
I’ve been conditioned to believe that the output was the goal. That the output was actualizing. Heavy expectations have blocked what I seemed to fundamentally get as a kid: the process is the art. There’s a lightness that happens in my body when I surrender to this. The feeling is fleeting but I can always find it again if I let go.