Things I Wish I Wouldn't Write About

Things I Wish I Wouldn't Write About

Things I wish I wouldn't write about: Julia.

I wish I wouldn't write about how the sound of her laughter could end wars. I wish I wouldn't write about her adorably-tousled hair or her chipped nail polish or her eyes that told stories of adventure and mischief and never-ending summer nights. I wish my pen would stop piercing the page with words that could never compare to the way her hand feels in mine. I wish my brain would just pack its bags and move on and forget about her.

I wish my thoughts wouldn't find comfort in the blank pages of notebooks; I wish they would settle down into the ears of loved ones. I wish everyone would stop looking at me like that. I wish everyone would understand that I am incapable of seeing the black sky lit up by stars or the red blur of a car passing by or the dingy white of my pillowcase without thinking of her.

I wish the words wouldn't come of their own accord. I wish I could control the things I write. I wish I wasn't bound and gagged and useless while the words knocked me senseless and possessed me.

I wish I wouldn't think about her so much.

I wish I wasn't so helpless and weak and disappointing. I wish I could accomplish feats like those of the heroes she used to scoff at. I wish I could shift tectonic plates to rearrange the earth and make a better one.

I wish I could bring her back.

*****

This is a little free-write I did. A few months ago, I was given a prompt by a fellow writer. The prompt was to start with the line: "Things I wish I wouldn't write about: Julia."

An Introduction

As you can probably tell from the existence of this blog, I have decided to start a blog. I am not exactly new to the blogosphere since I've been blogging on Read. Write. Ramble. for the past almost-four years. That blog, however, was an entirely different experience. Is an entirely different experience. I haven't given up on it yet! But it's a book blog, and book blogs have certain unwritten rules that one must follow. Also, it's a blog with multiple bloggers. I share blogging space with a co-blogger (well, now two co-bloggers) and I have learned that perhaps working with your best friend or friends isn't such a good idea after all. Nevertheless, I enjoy blogging about books, but I also want to venture outside of the book-blog, co-blogger world. So that's where this blog comes in.

At this point, I'm not exactly sure what I want this blog to be. All I know is that I have a strong desire to express myself in a space where I feel completely free, and Read. Write. Ramble. is simply not that place for me. This blog might become a lifestyle blog where I write long, rambling, slightly boring posts about my long, rambling, slightly boring life. Or it might become a blog where I share my writing, since I am a young writer itching for places to share my writing.

Mostly, I want this blog to be me. And since I'm a complex, multi-faceted individual, I think it's perfectly fine if my blog is kind of a mess. It might turn into a place for me to share anything I feel like sharing, whether or not people actually want to read it. And if people don't want to read anything I put up here, that's fine with me. This blog is more about me than anyone else. I've created it for my own selfish reasons.

My goal, I think, is to make this blog somehow different from all my other social medias and internet things. Here is a place where I won't be bound by character limits or square dimensions or even my limited patience with video editing. (Speaking of which, please follow my Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube channel.) I want this blog to be the place where I can go to spill everything I need to spill. I hope that with a fresh audience (or, more realistically, no audience) I can feel more freedom on the internet, a place that hasn't felt free to me in a long time.

So, here I am. This blog is very new, and I'm sure it will undergo a thousand little changes before I settle on something permanent. The design will probably never be something I'm proud of since I have no idea how to design a blog, but it'll do. I'm looking forward to seeing where this blog takes me, and I hope it takes me somewhere good.

If you'd like to follow this blog and come along for the ride, I would greatly appreciate it. I can't promise it will be a fun--or even interesting--ride, but I guess we'll see how this goes.

:)

How Nail Polish Was Invented

How Nail Polish Was Invented

When I was younger,

I used to walk through school with my head down.

Loneliness was a storm cloud hanging over me on the playground,

where I sat on the empty swing set,

hoping someone would say “hi” to me.

But no one ever noticed the plain girl

in her clothes of gray and black and brown.

Boring, quiet, timid;

not an ounce of confidence in her body.

Years later, a trip to the tiny drugstore next to the movie theater

resulted in the purchase of three bottles of nail polish.

Indecision over which color to paint my naked nails—

purple or pink or blue,

all vibrant hues,

all bold choices—

led to the application of all of them.

Ten fingers,

three colors,

one kaleidoscopic mess in the bathroom.

My hands were blindingly bright and smudged and messy,

because of course I didn't actually know how to apply nail polish,

not like the nice ladies at the salon my mother used to take me to.

The nail polish was extreme,

a bit garish,

but when I walked into school the next day,

my bland clothes did not seem so bland next to my flashy nails.

So I smiled at my classmates,

and they smiled back,

and at recess, I was no longer alone.