When I was a child, I read. I read anything I could. Everything I was allowed… and a few things I wasn’t.
I was also an insomniac. I remember being sent to bed at 9:30 every night and I know it was well after 2 before I went to sleep. I had a night light… I used the light of it to read by. I now need and wear glasses or contacts. I listened to the radio late at night. I listened to old time radio shows, music, reruns of debates and even plain static. I listened to talk shows after that. Late night topics that I was much, much too young for.
I read and absorbed everything around me. I paid attention to peoples tones and body language and the way they spoke. I calculated cause and effect by watching people, by listening closely. I observed.
I hadn’t started writing yet. I was only 10 or so. I didn’t have a voice but I also didn’t know I needed one. I had no idea I had so much to say. Nobody was listening, so I didn’t talk. It was simple then. Hardly anything in life is simple anymore. I don’t know if I like complicated or have just become so accustomed to it that I don’t know anything different after all this time.
I remember my first diary. It was pink and blue and I just knew that the lock would keep all my secrets inside. I wrote of boys and crushes and everyday life. I was proud of having something that was all mine, that would retain my private thoughts. I was 14 when I realized that my private thoughts weren’t… private. I thought that my diary would never be violated, and I was wrong. I didn’t stop writing in a journal, I just hid them well. When I was 16, I sat down with a pair of scissors and all 6 of the journals I had accumulated and shredded them so they would remain my thoughts alone. And they have. I felt like a cutter that night… so attached was I to those words. They may have just been scribblings on a page, but they were my soul and I resented having to rid myself of them for safety’s sake. Who the fuck wants safety like that. At 16 I felt like I was running from the law, and… in some ways, perhaps I was. But my journals didn’t judge me, my scribblings never broke my heart or lied to me. They got me through the roughest times in my life and I felt like I was ripping out part of my soul to be pureed along with my journals. To this day, I feel like I left part of me there that night.
Alone is how I feel when I write. I know people will read this, more people than I would probably be comfortable with if I knew just who was reading this, but for right here and now, it’s just me and a keyboard and nothing you can say or do will change that.
I still hide my journals. I think it’s a habit, I know it’s a precaution that probably does no good, but it makes me feel good about it. You think I’m open here… this ain’t nothing.
I have found over the years that I have many, many things to say, and writing is an effective way of expressing myself. I’ll still be judged for my point of view… but I don’t have to deal with it in person. You can’t interrupt me when I’m typing. Then again, it could be like the real world, where everyone is listening but nobody cares. Sometimes writing is the loneliest feeling in the world, I just can’t make myself stop doing it.
I still listen though. Even though I have recently found my voice. I still watch, and listen, and learn. I learn so much from peoples actions. I learn that I’m constantly disappointed in mankind at the poor choices they make when they have the opportunity to do better… to be better. To stand for something, to be someone to believe in. I guess I’ll keep waiting for that to ever happen.
