One, I’d like to say that the more you look at the word irony, the more you’re sure it’s definitely not a word.
But it’s important that it is the title of this post, because I can’t think of anything better.
I’d like to take a brief break from my school system rants to rant about something else.
I submitted something super deeply personal to a website. They said no thanks. I’m not angry that it got rejected, I just find it super ironic.
BECAUSE the post is about how whenever I write, it’s not meaningful, elegant beautiful essays that are always saying something.
The reason it was rejected is because it was too abstract, and didn’t mean enough.
C’mon, laugh with me.
So here it is, because the beauty of having a blog is when people say “please don’t put that in my face,” I get to put it in their face.
Here goes:
I have never identified myself as a writer.
People ask me all the time “So you’re a writer?”
I always say “Well, I like to write”
It might just be a confidence thing. Maybe I just need to grow up. If I like writing, and I want to write all the time, maybe I should just assume the title.
But it doesn’t feel right.
I am not a writer.
I don’t know how to write.
I have terrible grammar. I forced my English teachers to take my papers without an outline, because I don’t know how to write an outline.
I don’t write outlines.
My words don’t wait to be organized, or proper, or in the right places.
Sometimes they don’t even give me the pleasure of showing up to my party. I’ve been stood up by words. It hurts.
I am not the owner of what I write. I don’t write.
I express.
I open a door and let whatever wants to come out, come out.
I am not a writer.
I am a struggler.
I am a fighter.
I am a worrier, and a little bit of a warrior.
I am a climber, and a crier, a dreamer and a skeptic.
People say to always look up.
I’m always looking down. Or looking too high, so all I see is just how far I am from my goal.
I want to live on a farm and home school my kids, but I can’t even motivate myself to go do something some days.
I am a human.
I am faulty, and broken.
I am loving, and searching.
I am not a writer.
I can not be elegant, or beautiful. I am too loud and too much, I get headaches from my thoughts sometimes.
I am not saying all this to earn a compliment, or a pat on the back. I am not writing this to be told that I am, in truth, a writer, and I will go far.
I am saying this because these are the words inside of me, these are the words that are angry at me for trying so hard.
These are the words that want me to stop trying to be what I think I should be.
They want me to stop trying to fix the girl in the mirror.
They want me to unclench my fists, to open my fingers a little and let myself in.
I write. I write. I write.
I am not a writer.
When I was a kid, after getting patted on the back by a few much older grown ups, I asked my mother “I don’t get it. I’m not doing anything except for putting words next to each other. Everyone can do that”
She shook her head and laughed and said “No, not everyone can”
As a child, I thought I was writing. When people asked what I’m going to do when I grow up, I said I want to be a writer.
It is not writing that gives me such solace though. It is not writing that I turn to at 9 am and 3 am.
It is my heart.
I open the door a crack.
I let the struggle come out and write itself into a poem, a story, a novel.
I let the happiness dance across my phone, my notebook, my desk.
Sometimes I share.
Sometimes I fold the paper into a tiny square and tuck it back inside where it came from, because it’s not ready yet. I’m not ready yet.
I’ll never be beautiful.
I’ll never be perfect.
I will never be not struggling.
Maybe I will live on a farm and home school my children.
Maybe I will live in the city and send them to the nearest school.
Who can know?
I’ll never be a writer though.
To be a writer, I would have to follow the rules of the writing world- a place that every time you write, you mean something.
You say something important, and heart-warming, and game-changing.
I can’t follow those rules, because my words don’t know how to move under my command.
They move with me, they can only write what is inside my heart, and sometimes what is in there is only selfish, and full of self-doubt instead of letting itself feel for others.
When I began writing this, I didn’t know where my words would take me.
I’m not at the end, this can never end, because as long as my heart is beating, it will have words it wants to say.
I’ll never be a writer.
I may author novels, and write poems under the stars, or write non-sensical blog posts twice a week for the rest of my life.
I’ll never be a writer, but I’ll always be writing.
I am not a writer. I am a human who is searching and I am a human who is finding, and I am finding myself between the words.
ThisPublicDiary 