“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” ― Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades
When I began this journey of journaling my everyday thoughts I knew it would be the biggest challenge of the new year. Above everything else, writing has always been the hardest thing for me to do and yet I can't seem to pull my life in any other direction besides that of the storyteller. I've written for two days in a row, the longest in a while and my body is both physically and mentally drained. I've never felt less creative and worthy of language. It's a funny feeling to have the capability and desire to write and yet to have nothing to say. The great legend Toni Morrison once said,
"If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it"
I heard this quote for the first time today and theres something about it that I just can't let go of. Maybe I'm still grieving Toni and her presence is all over those words, all over so many of my own words. But I've never been able to correlate submission with liberty until now. Until Toni. Right now, I'm at this crossroads in my life where I'm being asked to love chaos or run from it. I don't know if I'm fight or flight yet. I know that when I'm sexually harrassed by a man on the street, I put my head down and pray that these feet could become wings. I also know that there isn't a woman in my life I wouldn't go to war for. Why are both possible and why are there still so many questions surrounding my ability to survive in this skin. It was one my favourite authors and most influencial artists of the 20th century who said,
"There are years that ask questions and years that answer." ― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora seemed to have known it all back then. I remember reading her novel in my 11th grade English course, the way she described love made my body wish to sink herself into a pit of Zora's tales. It was as if she dug straight into my stomach and described all the hunger and craving I had been feeling. As if she could hear my lonliness grumble, the goosebumps on my skin becoming an aging sign of my exposure. I wish I could ask Toni, Zora, Zadie, Yaa, Chimimanda how they did it and still do it. I need Warsan and Maya to explain how they held language like the child from their wombs and asked it to love them. I want to know what that feels like. To hold the words and have them want you. I've always battled with the stories I tell to stay. They come in gasps and stay only long enough to let me see they eyes or their lips or tongue. Sometimes I can see the thigh and heel, an elbow, or rib even. But never the full body. I can never finish the soty. Why can't I finish the story. I've been living in two decades of questions. Will the next 20 have the answers or this all I get? Longing with no relief? I write about it in hopes that the truth falls out and into these words somewhere along the way.
