i have spent a good portion of my life sharing myself with others through words written explicitly across various mediums, grasping for that unspoken hand extension that says ‘wait– yes, me too’. in times of transition and uncertainty, specifically, written and read words have been my unchanging anchor. a quick look at the hundreds of books i’ve collected the last ten years are testament to the fact that those hand grasps have been the most formative contributions to the person i am.
about two years ago i started seriously re-evaluating the meanings, intentions, and purpose of every little thing that i throw out into the world and subsequently began to fold into myself. learning to speak in poetic vagueness, i wrote more than ever and shared very little. i’ve reveled in the sacredness of the secrecy, and still hold that close, not wanting to spoil what should be whispered by screaming it into a void. political becoming personal, personal remaining personal; i guess that this is me saying i’m rusty.
i guess this is me saying that i am learning to befriend shared words again, learning to accept their nuances, to push through the ways they seem inadequate or inappropriate and into the ways in which they bring grace and life. i’m in a time of transition and uncertainty, and what i know best is to process in words and grasp again for that unspoken hand extension.
i guess this is me saying that i’m scared, but i think we all are. i’ve always understood life to be circular–a series of adaptations and transitions–but that doesn’t make it any easier. learning the ways in which hypothetical, theoretical understandings of things feel very different than tangible, look-me-in-the-eye-and-listen, humanizing understandings.
i guess this is me saying that i have no idea what the hell i’m doing or where i’m going next, but do any of us? right now my what-the-hell looks like the closeness of graduation, the uncertainties of the next year, the shitty realities that accompany relational shifts in the people around me (don’t move away friends!!!!!! we can live together in a big house forever, right?!?!) maybe my what-the-hell is also me painfully missing art as i pursue academia, unsure of how i will soon pursue art alone and survive without a conventional academic identity i’ve held for 17 years. it’s a familiar what-the-hell, though, familiar in the way that you know you will survive this, again. we’ve fought and learned through fear together, you and i, but that doesn’t make it a welcomed uncertainty.
i guess this is me learning, again, that life is a second-by-second kind of deal, that identity evolution is not a line you cross once-and-for-all. if you’re teaching yourself to listen to your gut, if you’re learning to speak in the language of honesty, if you’re reminding yourself to trust that love and justice will win in the end, if you’re avoiding self-reflection altogether, if you’re afraid of unlearning and terrified of un-liberating, if you’re counting down days, if you’re kicking and screaming at the idea of any sort of change, if you’re learning to accept feelings as feelings and the weirdness of being human as the weirdness of being human, if you are learning to admire the moon as you wax and wane, reveling in the inevitable cycle of transition,
i guess this is me whispering into that void, ‘me too, me too, me too.’
