Visions. And secrets.

When I think about my child-self, my little girl memories, all that little girl wanted to be was a story-teller, a poet, a person who gathers and arranges words like some some people gather and arrange flowers.

“...but when you have a gift, it isn't yours to keep to yourself. It's the reason you're here. It's your purpose.” - Nancy Horan

Words are the breakdown through which I see all of life. Instead of molecules or notes, or chords, or colours, words in even black and white snakes back and forth across the page, the portals through which a little girl found a big world, and through which now a grown up girl is trying to pass. When I write, I can see things that I can’t otherwise see. And I can feel things that I can’t otherwise feel.

“The key question to keep asking is, 'Are you spending your time on the right things?' Because time is all you have." - Randy Pausch

Things make sense in flashes and glimpses, in me and around me. They unravel themselves and line up into black and white rows, and those rows nourish me, sliding down my throat like noodles.

Autumn in my pocket.

I can feel things turning slowly. I can feel this tiny fragile writer person getting bigger, like a candle flame growing. This afternoon is a writing afternoon, and I feel giddy, bold, in a new way. I feel like I have a secret. I am becoming something else.

I lifted my head to look up into the changing leaves, thinking how at some point, we were all headed home. At some point, all of this, everything and everyone, became memory.

On the outside, I look like a person who has a writing desk, I wear dresses and sparkly trainers and flit about in my line of bread-and-butter work. But underneath, I am a writer. I am stunned still, and keep marvelling at it!

YOU. love YOU. YOU rock. YOU are beautiful. YOU are enough. YOU are needed. YOU.

A little bit ago, things were murky, tangled and teary. I knew that something in me was changing, but it felt vague and not yet here, like a low train whistle, or the growl of thunder in the distance. I have spent a hundred nights trying to find words for what’s happening, feeling something strange and new being born.

The sound of what cannot be seen, sings within everything that can. 

For me, to write is an act of rebellion! An uprising against that part of me that needs to be responsible, helpful, adaptive. It is one of the first things, maybe the very first thing, that is entirely my own, that doesn’t help anyone, doesn’t make anyone else’s life any easier, doesn’t facilitate or provide structure, or administrative support for anyone else. I’ve always been a team player, a work horse, and to do something surely out of the deep love for the act itself feels foreign, and vaguely scandalous. It feels, I’m realizing, selfish. I feel in the best moments, in spite of the uncertainty, inspite of the fear, like Lily Briscoe, in ‘To the Lighthouse:’

“Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision…”

“Nothing ever really goes away - it just changes into something else. Something beautiful.” - Sarah Ockler

I had that line written on my wall for years, years ago. And now it holds a whole new richness. I have had my vision. And I thought it would come in a flash, a bright beam of knowing. But it’s come in the same way all things have come to me. It has come to me with a fight. It has come to me the hard way, through tears and fog, through fear and chaos, and now has landed in the palm of my hand like a firefly.

“Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.” - William Faulkner

There now, I have had my vision.

“Are you breathing, are you lucky enough to be breathing?" - Hettie Jones

What is something you have always wanted to do, but never thought it was possible?