Every so often, I feel overwhelmed by nothing more than the fact that I'm alive. Living is an awfully big adventure, so says Peter Pan, and sometimes, I feel like everything is crashing down around me. Things never go wrong in little ways, but only in big, scheming, gigantic ways that crash everything down around me. But for some reason, those moments become freeing. After the initial freak out of labels, people and events, I take a deep breath and I let come what may. How zen of me. I felt like this yesterday. For some reason, the events of my life just accumulated and made me feel like something wasn't right. Nothing is wrong, but why am I doing these things if all that will happen afterwards is heartbreak and angst.
In case you don't know this about me, I tend to over think everything. Who am I kidding, if you're reading this, you probably know me, meaning you probably know that already, and have for some time. You're nodding your head in agreement right now, and laughing at me in that, oh it's so cute how you're crazy sort of way. Or in that, you are bat shit crazy and why are we friends/related, I need to get you eradicated from my life as soon as possible sort of way. In which case, you're a jerk.
Whenever I feel like this, I write. I always have. In fact, I can't really remember when all the thoughts inside my head became stories, tales or anything like this. I have vague memories of being little and, while I could read, I couldn't make the letters myself. So I would pretend. I never created anything similar to a letter, only squiggles to imitate my mother's cursive (that was illegible, too), and I would know exactly what I had written. They were mostly adventure tales about my dolls or stuffed animals. Oreo (one of those stuffed cats with marbles in it's head. What were those called? If you know, please inform me!) was often the protagonist. She would go on adventures in the jungle (she was a snow leopard) with her animal friends, one of which was a dog named Sparkey, and there was a bear that mooed involved too. The bear never had a name. He was steif and I never really got to play directly with him. When I was two (I think, the picture I'm thinking of directly depicts me with little to no hair. I was mostly hairless until 3 ish), I would be seated next to the bear, holding it's hand (paw?) and we were roughly the same size. The bear, however, played a role in these stories, and was often (always) the wise old sage who knew how to get Oreo and her ragtag crew out of whatever trouble they got into.
I'll remind you, I knew these stories back then. I knew how they played out, and I had written them down, but alas, I wrote them in my own language that I forgot when I grew up and started worrying about homework, friends and getting published. Apparently, you need to write in a recognizable language for that.
I was in third grade when I first entered a writing competition. I wrote about a witch (with red hair and freckles) who accidentally let everyone know what she was. This was, apparently, against the Witching rules. The tale received an honorable mention in the competition, the version was complete with my illustrations and hand-bound cover. I should really find that book. I remember it being pretty awesome, but that's, again, me remembering something I did, so of course it's awesome.
I kept writing on through middle school, staying on similar subjects. It was wizards, witches and once in a while, a vampire would show up. I was so ahead of my time, what with the whole vampire trend that's going on right now. My vampires were much more bad ass than whatever his name is from those books. My eighth grade teacher would constantly encourage me, telling me exactly what to fix from my stories. He had me delve into my characters, put the stories aside for a moment so I could really understand where they were going. The stories often changed once I understood the men and women I had created. More than just editing my writing, he had me read. Read all sorts of books so that I could learn writing styles, techniques and words. I always loved reading, but it was at this time that I learned how much I could glean from it.
Come to think of it, it was at this point that I started to communicate in a different way than my peers. I talked funny, I thought about writers. I would prefer to sit and write in my journal or on a computer than interact with real people. It was here that I started feeling cut off from my peers, from my friends and from everyone. It's strange to think of something that I love so much having so much to do with an isolated time in my life.
It took me until late high school to get published in the real life. I entered a poetry contest with a 20 line poem that I now will look up the name too. It was weird, it was strange. I remember that. It wasn't about a human, but it wasn't about a myth. I won $50 and was published in a collection of poems. Pretty cool for a girl who never liked writing poetry.
It was here that I started writing short stories and essay type things. I wanted to be prolific, and I see now that it hurt me. I started focusing small, and like Jason, my eighth grade teacher, suggested constantly, I focused on characters. A story is nothing without a person, he would always tell me. My high school AP English teacher, Ms. Kolsrud, reminded my class of the same thing, constantly. Characters like Damien, Blanche DuBois, Jake from The Sun Also Rises, Dean Moriarity and Sal, the hapless follower in a cross country drug adventure. Even Atticus Finch, who made me want to be a lawyer and not all at once, because you can do the right thing, try to save a life, but fail because of an institution that the law can't fight against. I would meet people and create a life for them. I would explain why someone was angry or sad or happy. We would know why these people lived for the lives that I gave them.
Ms. Kolsrud also explained to us that a writer pulls from himself into the story. That Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who of course wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, was writing about her own postpartum depression experience. These things were real, but they weren't real. A writer pulls from experiences, but creates a foreign world, even within a familiar one.
I had a story about illegal immigration published a few years ago in college. I'm still not sure where, but my "college writing" professor (no kidding, that was the name of the class) asked for my permission to shop it to journals and magazines and I heard from him a month later that it was published. Hopefully under my name.
Writing calms me, it always has. It reminds me that it can always be worse. The end is not near, the world is not crashing down around me. Writing is cathartic. It releases stress and fear but does not let you forget the root. I will always write, I think, as evidenced by this public journal that no one ever reads. It's the only thing that keeps me sane, even though it drove me to the cusp of insanity many times. Apparently not sleeping can do that to you. My friends and family, they're my bones, but writing is my blood. Writing gets the oxygen to my brain and keeps me breathing. The people in my life support me and keep me standing, but it's words that fire my neurons and make me think.
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