When I began writing, I wrote poetry.
I have trouble remembering my own history sometimes.
I loved fairy tales first.
I once started a story about something I can no longer remember and showed it to my grandmother who said it was good for my age.
I immediately gave it up. I stopped writing stories for years.
I have a book I wrote in elementary school. It has a story and it has poems. So maybe I started with both.
When I got serious about writing, though, I started with poetry. Even my first fanfic was a poem.
But in high school I figured out that I wasn't very good at them. Or maybe they were just too exposing.
I wrote a poem in high school and showed a teacher and she asked if I was gay. I immediately re-wrote the poem and destroyed every copy of the original. I remember the lines I changed. I no longer remember what they replaced.
This is the same teacher who told me that Edna St. Vincent Millay didn't count as a female poet when I gave that name. This was after she asked for my favorite poets who were Keats and Yeats at the time and then asked if I read any women. I like Millay, I told her. She doesn't count, she told me.
Looking back, I don't think she was a very good teacher.
The point is, I figured out I wasn't very good at poetry. I don't hear rhythm and so can never figure out meter. I clung too hard to rhyme schemes or very obvious rhythms even I could hear.
Sweet cologne through twilight air / floats through my mind and anchors there
I wrote that in my early teens and I still can't dislodge it.
I didn't start lines powerfully enough or end them powerfully enough or use strong enough language or the right details.
I always said I wanted criticism. I wanted to be better. But sometimes you look at all the holes in your ship and a tiny tin of caulk and have to just give in. No matter how hard you try or fast you move, you're still going to drown. Better to get out now and swim to safety than to go down with the ship.
This isn't a poem, though it leans that way at times. I'm just recording my thoughts as I have them.
Tumblr now houses my only poetry and every single poem is a reminder why I should stop trying. That's even the tags I use.
reasons why ailelie shouldn't write poetry
But I can't stop myself from drowning.
Words and stories are my first loves. When I was a little kid, I'd throw a book down on the floor, step up onto it like a soapbox, and loudly call for attention.
Sometimes I think people nowadays think I'm quiet or don't talk that much. And, often, I don't around them. I've learned to hold my words in to not monopolize the conversation to not make it weird.
My freshman English teacher in high school actually decreed that another classmate and I were not allowed to talk in class because we dominated every discussion.
I love words. I love to talk. I love to make up songs no one is ever going to hear. My phone is full of my recordings. They aren't good. They're just mine. I love to write.
"I think better with a pen in my hand," I tell people over and over again and none of them realize just how exposing that statement is.
I am most myself when I am writing. I am most anything when I am writing.
When I fell into a depression a few years ago, I stopped writing. I get worried when I realize I've not written anything in a day or two. I can't remember the last day I passed without writing something and that's good.
I am terrified of losing my sight primarily because of the new barrier that would exist between me creating and consuming words.
I miss being the kid who never shut up. I always talked too fast and slurred my words together until speech therapy had me overpronouncing them.
In school, I loved studying literary devices. Language lets us do so much and I wanted to learn all of it.
But I've never quite had the talent of making words bend the way I want in fiction. I'll never be a writer. Or a poet. I decided a very, very long time ago that my passion would never be my occupation. I never wanted to resent words or writing.
But part of me wishes I'd honed the skill. I'll never be able to abandon ship, but holes are numerous and my tin of caulk is near-empty.
I'm going to drown here. I'm going to be okay with that.
