I was reading one of my friend’s blogs and at the end she wrote a note to herself, kind of to remind herself to breathe and that the world won’t end if things don’t happen exactly as you imagine they should in order for you to feel good about what you do. At least, I think that’s what it was about. And then after, she asked what a little note to ourselves would look like.
Mine goes like this:
Dear me,
Dear me,
“Maybe there’s nothing really missing.”
Love,
me.
This also reminds me of a piece of advice another friend shared with me earlier in the week.
“A delay is better than a disaster.”
Deep! Oh, timing. So strange. It’s like, when you don’t have what you want or what you imagine would be awesome you just want it every day and always feel like it’s missing. But, in a perfect and logical world you would be in conscious preparation. It’s easier to do this in some realms of life than in others. 3 examples:
1. Ever since my sophomore year of high school I knew I wanted to go to Columbia. And, I had always been a good student and had a very different relationship with learning than I do now that I wish I could get back to, but that’s neither here nor there in what I’m trying to talk about… in school, I had always done my best and as the prospect of college got closer I dreamed and I kept trying. I think, even if more on a subconscious level, forgetting to eat because I was so engrossed in homework, setting an alarm for 4 am to finish a paper and ACTUALLY waking up, falling asleep with textbooks in my bed and waking up in the middle of the night to read at least another sentence before my eyelids felt too heavy and I rolled over again… was all in preparation. I knew what I had to do to have a chance in getting to where I wanted to be, my best. And, sometimes my best was to actually let myself sleep. I’m not gone front. But in any case, I had to be focused. Being here has also showed me the meaning of “be careful what you wish for,” but still I’m glad I’m here for a number of reasons, largely opportunities and people that I’ve met but that’s a whole nother post.
2. I want to be a writer. I want to make a career out of being a writer. I’m still trying to figure out what the preparation for this looks like. So far, I just make sure that I write whenever the spirit moves me, meaning random ideas that come to mind, putting homework to the side to start writing a story or poem, sitting down on random steps, riding the subway with no destination for inspiration, listening to little voices inside of my head, practicing being bold and not giving a damn how weird I may seem, submitting to publications, taking extra writing workshops where available, learning to become comfortable with being different and challenging myself to do things in new ways. Now, professionally and go-getterly and make moneyingly- I still have work to do. And I also think there’s an unconscious level where, sometimes something annoying/strange happens to me and I wanna cuss something awful but it leads me to writing and I appreciate it. Writing, among many other things, is about living and the insights and voice you are given by living. I’m really trying to remember to make sure I live.
3. Ugh. Mmhm. Yeah, you already know. I want love. Have, for as long as I remember. And, of course as I get older this means different things and I learn more about what I mean by this. And, that is a part of preparation. The thing about love though is… I have no like “time control” over it. Of course with college, you get there after high school. And writing is more in the middle because you never really know when and if you’ll be recognized but there are deadlines and there are efforts to make with results. However, preparation for love: there are no benchmarks and time-lines, you have to get there by faith and resolve. Or at least that’s what I imagine. I think a big thing for me is patience, and constantly searching and remembering other ways to stay awake in the meantime. And I wonder if every time I write a new poem, story, idea, random list, journal entry etc I’m getting closer. I’m realizing things that if I deal with now, don’t have to create barriers between hearts. And I wonder if every time I wake up thinking it’s just gonna be another day, and instead I find a new artist or listen to something I haven’t heard in a while and listen for HOURS with no regard for time or what “I should be doing” and when I read or meet a stranger, or see something beautiful, or ugly, or intensely ordinary, hear a new voice/artist/music in the subway/on the street just anything to break the monotony and routine I wonder if I’m getting closer, if I have a new story for you. And I really wonder if you can hear me when I’m in a group of people and my heart just uh keeps on racing and beating and threatening to break out and burst through me and out on to a table or floor every time I feel a pure urge to speak, no matter how simple. Like when I wrote this poem in class yesterday:
List: What Black Women Can’t Do
1) Be erected in statue like Nike
2) Attract John Mayer
And read it in a room, largely, full of people who don’t look like me at the risk of being “too black, ornery, divisive” (all of which wouldn’t necessarily be true, but be perceptions).
I wonder if I’m closer. I wonder if this makes me closer. I wonder if the entries I write to you in my little mini moleskins get me closer. I wonder if that day I really felt everywhere inside me like I was gonna find you because I had finished one of those brown books and got hella angry and down but still started another, different but still earnest, little brown book I still write in now … I wonder if that gets me closer. I just want to be closer and closer. And I wonder if your name is really Jeremiah. Another random thought, maybe from reading a book in preteenhood with a really sweet black boy named Jeremiah, that reading a chapter of you in the Bible every once and a while gets me closer. Whatever it takes to be closer. And I’m just wondering now, if that means to forget you for a little while. And, if that means to only think about me. About building so much of me for you to see one day, and every day after. If that means challenging myself to find a new author, new song, a new stranger, new brand of Pringles (shout outs to Onion Blossom and Buffalo Wings), new scarf, hat, tee, form of poem, sentence, color, argument, quote, song, corner/ray of sunlight, chair to read in, stance to lounge in, dream to dream I love every time I feel like love is missing I’ll do it for me, but mostly for you.
Because I want to believe that you can love someone that much and it make more sense than anything I’ve ever been taught or latched on to in fear. Because I don’t want to live a life I’m not convinced I’ll really live life until I find someone that can give me that mutual. Who yearns, in however much ignorance and naiveté or wonder or “be careful what you wish for” just like me. Just because it feels good to dream.
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