looking through me

Reading my own writing is bizarre—like looking in a Picasso-esque mirror. It’s such a fragmented image of me.

In reality each piece is a snapshot, a moment in time, how I was processing a particular aspect of life on a particular day. Often they are thoughts that had been bubbling, inarticulate, unformed just under the surface for long stretches. And then in a gracious moment of clarity they congealed enough to fit into words. I’ve simply preserved them as reminders for myself in the hazier moments.

I fear I seem much more put together and a far deeper thinker in writing than I really am. They are my words—my thoughts—but they are an incomplete picture. The vast majority of my thoughts remain haphazard: a nebulous, amorphous jumbled blend of sentence fragments and vague images.

So when they do come together and fall into a logical shape I want to preserve them. Not because they’re in any way remarkable, but because I am frighteningly good at getting lost in the foggy moments. When it’s dark, I forget the light. When my visibility shrinks, I need to be reminded my field of vision has been greater before . . . and it will be again.

That’s why I write. It takes away my excuse to live narrowly. It takes away my deniability. It holds me accountable for lessons learned.

But who I am is both much more and much less than the words trailing behind me in print.