642 Things To Write About

So, I bought this funny book a year ago. It's full of writing prompts (because I'm a huge nerd and would buy something like that). I've only done...like...7 since I bought it...and now I've made it a goal to do every.single.one.

And here is the first:
What can happen in a second?

In the second you've just spent reading this,
someone has wrecked their car,                    
someone has just taken their last breath,
or had their last thought,
and
someone has just given birth,
and someone has just taken their first breath -
life and death are happening simultaneously
right this
second.

In the second it took me to write the this letter,
someone has sent a text (which unfortunately they can't un-send),
and someone else has told a joke, which has just taken
a terrible turn,
and has ended up as and unintended insult.
Ouch.

In a single second you can:
choke,
push the button on a microwave,
smack your bubblegum,
trip,
make eye contact with someone,
burn yourself,
find a dollar,
burp,
say yes
or no...
and in one second, with just the click of a mouse -
or the enter key -
you can spend all the money in your bank account.

So I'm fairly convinced that not just anything can happen in a second,
but everything.

The Billy Goat Gruff Opened His Mouth and Swallowed The Troll Whole.

Lonely words falling

from left

to right

D

O

W

N

the page

only to land atop each other

in a mess that will never make sense.

There is no "I" in Me and Myself.

I woke up feeling very much like myself this morning.

That could come off sounding a little strange, because - hey, don't we all wake up feeling like who we are? Because, we'll we are who we are?

Maybe. Sure.

But, today, I woke up feeling very much like who I am this morning. I still woke up to the tremendous ball and chain that is my health, but I also don't feel like I'm lost somewhere in this sea of 'what is the illness and what is me'? It's easy for me to drown in myself: my external self needs a lot more maintenance than my internal self.

Last night, I spent a lot of time reading about writing which, in turn, caused me to spend a lot of time thinking about who I am as a reader, writer and observer of the world. I was relieved when I read about how sometimes we get the crazies when we write, and everything just kind of falls onto the paper/word processer with no real restraints - because it shouldn't happen that way. For some reason, this rang true to my little soul.

Writing. Writing. Writing.
I love doing it. So why don't I always do it? I think about it, but I never do it. Sometimes, I just want to write down snippets from the conversations of the people around me, or a funny idea, or a word a teacher said wrong. I find myself hooked on little, seemingly meaningless nothings and I want to write them down but always never do for the sake of normalcy. But writing is cathartic. It's healing. It should go uninterrupted but never does. Writing takes you out of yourself, but also deeper into yourself. It should just be allowed to happen.

I mean. what do we do when we really, truly care for someone? We write for them: letters, poems, quick little notes. It's like we take tiny pieces of our soul and draw them with words on paper for them to keep and look at. Here. Here I am. And we cherish those things. Haven't you ever found yourself going through all your old notes (I'm talking about the ones you wrote and received in the middle/high school years), wanting to toss them but feeling like somehow you're committing an awful crime? It's like you're looking at the essence of who these people were and are, evidence that they existed in that moment, words that were selected specifically for you.

Writing is powerful. It's humbling.

So, with the security of knowing that I can deconstruct and reconstruct and rearrange and totally recreate my world through writing, I woke up feeling much more like myself this morning, knowing I am never lost inside myself unless I choose to be.