She had forgotten how to write. Not the click-click-click of the keys, in the correct order, to build the words. She was a master of speed typing (though at the moment she was slowed by the sudden issue of the letter 'a' requiring extensive force to register on the computer screen) and she typed in her own manner. Rather than ever learn the proper form, she had invented her own style in her teens when her family brought home a big gray box and she first sat down to write never-ending fantasy stories with gruesome details.
Yes, she had been avoiding writing for so long, despite it being all she had ever wanted to do, to be accomplished at, etc. She had proclaimed to everyone who stood nearby that she was an author, would be famous and successful. Her favorite places were bookstores and libraries. Each visit to a place filled with organized books included the pilgrimage to the shelf where, by rights of alphabetical order, her books would be lodged. She would scooch the volumes on either side of her predestined space, to give herself a little room.
Her first love of storytelling was deep in the primordial past of her childhood, when fairy tales filled her mind. She grew on meals of fantasy, science fiction, historical stories, always developing her own version of events even as she absorbed the author's words. This editorial instinct would become one of her honed skills, a way she made money, while avoiding writing her own stories.
If she put a number to it, she would say that she was thirteen years old when she first identified as an author (the same age she identified as a witch, another integral aspect of self that she continued to embody). Now, the moment she is writing this, in the very instant that she writes words you are reading (if she ever puts these words in some public spot, perhaps the internet, or a bus station), it is 2 days and 1 hour until her 36th birthday, and she feels miserable.
For now, the world was rocking with great change, that she felt no right to put words to, and her own concerns were small. She, as many others, was struggling with unemployment during a pandemic. On the other hand, she was learning so much about the lived experiences of others whose lives were systemically oppressed, that despite her inter-sectional feminist degree she had grasped the theory, but now she was finally understanding the pain and the rage.
This was not her story to tell, it was hers to listen to. She is listening. She is also remembering how to speak in her own way, too.
So these words, if you read them, are just whispers in the dark from writer who had given up on herself to inhabit other roles. Easier to be a teacher, student, witch, mother, and so on. With a few words she says again, if only to herself.
These are my words. I am a writer.
jacobvanloon
annaxmalina
areudirty
tangentwithtanner
vaporwave
dededos
kaledo-art
snowghoul
