“I Am Turning This in Because”

I keep trying to think of different, interesting things that I could write about. I feel that all of my friends are beautiful, talented writers, whereas I am usually unable to string together a coherent sentence. I want to write the way that they do, their words touching the parts of my soul that are all grey and liminal-ish, finding their way to cracks in my heart that I didn’t even know were there. I want to make someone else feel the way I feel when I read the words of others.

But I can’t. Despite my best efforts, I am unable to pour anything of great literary substance into the many documents that litter my computer.

Regardless of my inability to write like I want to, I’m going to turn this in. Not because I’ve told anybody I will but because dammit, I want to follow through with this little dream that I’ve squirreled away in the back of my brain! Do I know what I’m going to write about? Absolutely not!

Here’s a list of all of the things I’ve tried and failed to write about, stitched together with pseudo-impactful italicized statements that will hopefully make the reader say “wow, what a thoughtful, insightful writer. She has truly touched a part of my soul I cannot explain blah blah blah.”

Shall we begin?

I’ve written numerous poems that could be interchanged with anything in Milk and Honey. This is not a compliment because all of my poems are Very Bad. My favorite poem is about baking bread on a Sunday morning and slamming the dough against my counter like it’s the hands of the men who have grabbed me on the street.

There are so many.

I have written circular sentences on my own body, my hatred of her, my attempt at loving her, my simple acceptance of my body as an act of neutrality. The parts I would change, the places I filter. The fact that I find myself crouched on the floor of my shower shaving my delicate parts again and again, even though the removal of body hair is not a divinely feminine attribute.

It’s a product of late-stage capitalism.

I wrote once about how I hate our arbitrary concepts of beauty, that women should be able to exist in the world without any expectation of being “pretty,” because beauty isn’t some price that we pay for simply living.

And yet…

I write about beautiful things. The smell of dirt after it rains. The stars I forget about unless I’m out camping. Watching people dance ballet. Watching people dance. Watching Maggie Rogers dance. Old couples walking in the park with their dogs. Finding the feeling of safety in the unsafe. The earth and everything on her. Mehndi on the arms of friends that hug me after months on opposite sides of the world. Double decker buses. Saris. Screaming “Woman” by Ke$ha in the backseat of my best friend’s car while drunk.

Beauty in simple things.    

I write about ice trays. I had a professor tell me that “the world wouldn’t stop turning if you just dropped dead one day” which is just bullshit because of course it wouldn’t. No one is so narcissistic that they believe the earth will stop spinning just because one person dies. But who would fill up the ice trays? If I suddenly died, no one in my apartment would fill up the ice trays in the refrigerator. Granted, I’m the one who uses the most ice. But still.

How much of others would die with me?

I’ve written on mosaics, on how we are all just made of tiny reflective fragments of the people around us, and how that must mean that none of us can exist as we are without the other, and how I hate that because I want to be a hashtag-independent person in control of who they are at all times gosh dang it!

But we were made for each other.  

I have written about boys, of course. Every girl has written about boys, and if they say otherwise they are lying straight to your face. Boys and the many ways they have hurt me occupy an embarrassing number of whatever-bytes on my laptop. I write about the only boy that I have loved. I write about the boys I only said I loved. I write about the boys I could have loved, but who decided that they couldn’t love me. I use toilet rolls as a metaphor for relationships and I read over it until it makes no sense.

Does any of this make sense?

I’m writing right now about all the things I cannot seem to write about, and there is just so much more I want to write about. How it feels to be parked at Pinewood on a Sunday night, surrounded by people you didn’t know three years ago, and how you couldn’t imagine life without them now. The tickle of warm soup as it goes down your throat. The amazing power of hoop earrings. Ice water in the mornings. Playing Bananagrams.

People have definitely stopped reading these by now.

I’m writing right now and I’m not editing it or sending it to anyone to proof-read because it is late, and this is due at midnight. So essentially, I’m writing this the way I’ve written every single essay since my freshman year of high school.

My AP Lit teacher is rolling over in her grave.

I’m writing because I can, and because that should be enough. Because writing is instinctively human, and we’ve commodified all art forms as products labelled “good” and “bad” and I could stand on my soapbox for hours and hours and rant about how God-awful capitalism is. But mostly…

I write because I’m avoiding my French homework.

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