I write every day. I sit down at my computer and I type and I type and I feel like I am doing something meaningful. I sit for hours in front of my computer screen, its light burning in front of me like an iridescent candle, and I feel like I'm worth it. What "it" is, I don't know, but I know that the worth of "it" is equal or less than my own worth.
Oh, who am I kidding?
I write for no one but myself. I write to better myself in a profession of instability, with little chance of success. I write these pretentious little -isms to chase away these feelings of inadequacy I've been feeling recently. I write and no one seems to hear me. I write, I use the only voice I have and I am silenced by the rest of humanity screaming for more.
I write against conformity when all I want to do is fit in. I write against following the rules when I haven't even gotten a detention in school and the last time I got grounded was over a year ago. I write about bounds and limitations of creativity when in all honesty I haven't exercised my creative side to its potential.
I write about inadequacy when I, honestly, am pretty damn happy with myself.
Life is great. I've got some pretty good SAT scores, I just visited my sister in college, I have parents that love me, I'm single and loving every minute of it, and for once I'm not trying to define myself by who I date.
In short, I wonder why I complain and why I view myself as a rebel when I truly have no right to complain, no cause to rebel against. It is a conundrum.
And the worst part is that this conundrum is okay. I'm so passive when it comes to opposition that I crumble almost constantly. I come across as determined and holier-than-thou in my writing when I'm a doormat in real life. I'm always complaining: I'm this where this is wrong, I'm this where that's not accepted.
Well, newsflash: Not that many people care.
Not like many people care about self-deprecation, either. It's not exactly flattering to slam your own writing, or worse, have it slam you.
I mean, hell, I'm listening to the Bangles! A teenaged white kid with brunette hair in an empty house on a Wednesday listening to The Bangles, and he's writing about intellectual stuff when he should be living his life like a normal kid!!
So this is my apology to the world for projecting an unreality. And my final blow into my own gut.
This is the real me talking, not the Me you read from or the Me that writes. This is the me that is lowercase and unpretentious, the me that is speaking in the voice that most wouldn't care to hear. This is the me that speaks in a quiet determination that is real and raw and passionate.
I will never put myself down again. Not even if I really deserve it. I will never let someone else put me down like that either. I will write as I have written, showing myself and producing an expose in which my soul is on display and the museum-goers are my Eternal Readers. Whom I thank for reading this, though the previous Me would have assumed that their jaws were on the floor.
This is my call out to myself. The myself that used to reside where it belonged: inside me.
Come back to me, to sunshine, to days of nothing, to days where the biggest worry wasn't the transitory nature of life but who to hang out with, to days where drama was a club and not an event, to days where cares were gone, to days where everything went right.
Cause those days are coming back now, and I'd like you there, me, whether you want to be or not. I know what I've done has stung you, and you have every right to be upset. But I want to be there with you. There for you.
Shall we?