so i write today
I am sitting on my bed in the chaos of Preston's departure, unwilling, unable, maybe, to really bring myself to the zumba youtube video workout or the making of dinner or the folding of laundry that's overdue in a corner of the room. It's a hard thing, long distance, because the stillness is lost in the miles logged, the yet-another-plane-ticket, the counting up and down the days and hours until you can be next to each other again.
I am thinking about Momastery tonight. I'm not sure why, an article on Relevant that people have been sharing on facebook that made me think of something of hers I read once and so I go to Glennon's blog, because Sarah Bessey links to it and I see that under the Relevant article, and I find myself paging through and reading those good words and thinking about writing and good words and spaces with nice colors and clean CSS coding. And I think about how I have so often wanted to have a big space like that, and those thoughts have a something, I don't know if it's a bitterness or just a wistfulness, or somewhere between them, about writing and me and the wide gap between what I think it should be and what I think it is.
Her Ted Talk link is in a corner. I click, lean against the pillows. She is only a few minutes in when I start to cry.
I want to be someone telling the world to take off its superhero cape. I want to tell you my story of emerging, how I have learned the shape of kindness can be the word no and the shape of grace can be in an ending. I want to tell you, especially, that I never thought I'd ever be a writer because I assigned the role to someone else in my poetry class that first year and I pretended I didn't want it so that it couldn't hurt me if it didn't happen, and I want to tell the world that sometimes the song about freedom has stanzas in it for whatever cage you've lived in. I want to be someone like Glennon, I think, and 17 minutes later I'm still on my bed in the same leggings avoiding the same zumba video with the same hole in my heart.
There is a part of me that thinks in this moment about the fact that I don't have my own domain name and I don't know how to code CSS, that asks me who I think I am, writing like this, 23 years old and still not sure if she knows how to make pancakes right.
But I am still writing today. I am still wanting to add some stanzas to that song about freedom and I still want to say to you that if you and me together in this watch these women - who write brave books and who speak brave Ted talks and who keep shouting about things like daring greatly and carrying on, warrior and being a jesus feminist and how mothers are superheroes - if you and me together watch them,
I think we'll start to tell each other. We'll whisper carry on, warrior in the supermarkets and down the corridors and into all the small places of our lives. We will tell you the new mom as we hug you during the peace in church that you are a superhero. We will learn how to write cards and notes to girls who wonder about how to be brave and dare greatly. And we will tell them yes, you can. And we will tell them yes, you are brave and beautiful and good and let's be in this together.
And so I write today.
Love,
hilary