pen to paper, perhaps

i’m not great with words. never have not been bad at them, and i’m already proving it to you. you had no reason to disbelieve me in the first place really, as trust should be given and then if broken, earned, but i felt i ought to displace any doubts should they exist right from the beginning. i’m about to leave, start a new chapter of my life or open a new book, or maybe what i’m doing truly can’t be quantified in literature analogies because this is my first time ever putting pen to paper, but i’m about to leave. i’m leaving behind everything and everyone i know, and although that makes me want to scream incomprehensible things at the sky because of the unjustness of it all, it also makes me want to shout while naked from the rooftops with joy. 

it’s scary, feeling like i’m a baby thrown in the deep end, but i know i’ll float. 

i’m going somewhere no one knows my name, or remembers that time i mispronounced ‘organism’ in front of a bunch of middle schoolers. (must i specify in which way said word was mispronounced?) i can tell anyone and everyone i meet i’m an only child or that i don’t have a middle name or that i was born in the deep heat of july, under cloudless blue summer skies. 

i won’t though. none of these things are true, but i could. i could and no one would have any reason to think i was lying, that i wasn’t something other than what i am. i guess what i’m getting at here is that i’ll be able to be me without the idea of being known as someone who isn’t me. that probably doesn’t make much sense to you, and it doesn’t really to me either, but i want to know myself in this new place and time as i know myself here, in this place and time. 

i think often about having a true core, something that is undoubtedly me in any universe or lifetime. would i know myself? no matter the circumstances of that life, would my beliefs and ideals still be the same? would i still love with the all consuming ferocity that i do now? would i still know pi out to the sixtieth decimal, because at one time that felt like the only steady thing i could ever count on, numbers and my inablilty to sleep? i don’t know. i’m terrified and excited and hoping that soon i’ll find out. 

i’m going to try out the new craze sweeping the nation, i’m going to be honest with myself and everyone else for this new chapter, this new book, this new page, this new time and place. perhaps not brutally, because baby steps are still steps, but i’m going to put one foot in front of the other no matter what, and soon i’ll be walking out the door.

i hope, if you don’t mind, that you’ll join me. 

-l