Monday, May 25, 2015

All you need is a pencil stub and one old envelope


 Today's post is to participate in the writing exercise:  How writing has positively influenced my life. Hosted by Positive Writer.

So many roles we all shoulder in this life.  Daughter, sister, student, friend, girlfriend, wife, co-worker, mother.  But when are you ‘me’?  For me it is when I’m writing.
I’m the me who counted the cracks in the sidewalk from my house to the corner convenience store because it seemed like something to do.  I’m the me that carefully closed my bedroom door so I could stay up long past my bedtime to finish reading the latest Judy Blume.  I’m the me who hid 'supplies' in a hollowed out log near some railroad tracks in the woods that only one other person knew about.  The me that rode her bicycle across town to the McDonald’s with 35 cents in her pocket to get a hamburger and a cup of ice water all by herself.  The one who sat on the quad in college soaking up the sun while people walked by, a redbird flew overhead, and I had no where I had to be in the for-seeable future (which was about 4 hours at that time, the future).

When I’m writing I feel the other precious roles in life, those I’m lucky to call my own, float away.  Dropping to the ground.  Waiting outside the doorway of my writing room. I look around in my own brain and say ‘What are you thinking about writing today?  Yes, you.  The one who lives in this body?”

I can feel the sidewalk under my roller skates.  I can smell the lilacs on the bush on my walk home from second  grade.  I hear my breath coming in and out of the lungs of the same girl who would run down the street for Mr. Softy with her dime.  Almost all of my true ‘me’ feelings are in childhood.  As soon as the older years come into play, I was trying to be someone.  Trying to be the student my father longed for.  Trying to have a career that seemed important.  Trying to take care of my laundry and decorate my first apartment like the Good Housekeeping magazine covers.  Even at 22 I was already trying to form my life the way a good solid life should be.  But the key word there is ‘trying’.  When I’m me, I’m not trying.  I just am.  Writing allows me to stop trying and just feel, breath, be, myself.  All those people studying and searching the world to find themselves?  I find myself every time I sit down to write. 

No comments:

Post a Comment