The Hero Of My Shit

Sometimes we run with reckless abandon at the person we {think we} want to be in our future. Whether we’re tromping clumsily down a dirt path pocked with ruts and holes or striding steadily on a perfectly paved asphalt byway, we are bound to trip and fall somewhere along the way.

My love for writing began with a pink and white diary.  Its gold-edged leafs sounded like tissue paper when I turned them. It had a lock, of course, and was typically hidden under my bed because although my stories were fraught with invention and whimsy, I had little imagination when it came to hiding my most personal possession.

I have had journals and diaries since the pink one. It seems as though every time I moved, broke up, made up, made out, or changed my major in college…I celebrated by purchasing a blank canvas for my new memoirs. They’re all here. In my house somewhere. Some have pictures drawn in them.  Many are just stories and poems.  One was given to me by my big-girl’s father to pen down my new adventures in parenting, but remains only a quarter of the way filled. Appropriate- considering how many changes I’ve gone through since she was born twelve years ago. I crack one open now and then when the house is empty or freakishly quiet.

My online journals are still out there, suspended in the interweb. Although I can no longer recall the login information for any of them, I still can view them. I can see who I was. Or who I was trying to be. I can relive the moment I met my husband through an entry written eleven years ago. I can see myself grow up as entries caught up in boys and spats with girlfriends slowly morphed into complexities like an unexpected pregnancy and my father’s death.

Today I carry spiral notebooks. A practical alternative to the tiny padlocked sort. The latest is black and has a Punky Mom’s sticker slapped on the front and half-written stories and blog ideas scribbled inside.

I’m a writer. I write. Nobody has to read the things I put down for this to be true. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do. NO. It’s what I have done. What I’ve been running to. Sometimes at top speed, but more frequently zigging and zagging- chased by life’s responsibilities. I’m getting closer to the writer I want to be, but still I’m uncertain if I’ll ever get to shake her hand.  I think that’s how it’s supposed to be.  I’m running to a writer who never seems any closer.  

Charles Bukowski said, “When I write, I’m the hero of my shit.”