Written as a diary entry late last night, so I suppose the apt opener is, “Dear Me,”

In the pursuit of transparency, as I am setting down to write this I am on the tail end of a thirteen hour day spent watching You and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Billie Eilish’s carpool karaoke, and a random person’s 41-minute apartment makeover vlog, followed by a very melancholic listening of Harry Styles’ “Falling,” but the fanmade remix where it sounds like it’s being played to an empty arena during a rain shower, which I have saved to a special playlist for inevitable future needs to have a beautiful soundtrack to an ugly-crying breakdown. Or, worse yet, a silent cry. I’d like to say I haven’t had one of those in a while, but who am I kidding, the woe-is-me is strong with this one.

I have to be up early tomorrow to catch a Star Wars showing with my brother, because we live in a spoiler-fraught society where no experience is sacred anymore and god forsaken Thanos has to demand your silence for you to have the good sense not to ruin something for someone else. A four-year-old spoiled Force Awakens for me at New Years in 2015. That wasn’t fun. I skipped out of work early this past spring to go see Captain Marvel because I was so scared one of my sixth graders would spoil it for me. Why does everything have to have a big plot twist? I’m tired. I miss predictability.

I was going to read for a moment before my drowsy meds kick in, but I think I’m just too restless? Too antsy? Too nervous? I’m trying– in the literal handful of days we have left in this year– to put my feelings into coherent sentences. Or at least coherent questions. Why is all my hair falling out? Why haven’t my new meds helped me manage my disorder any better? Why am I literally, deer-in-headlights, boots-in-tar, would-rather-stick-my-hand-in-boiling-water incapable of replying to texts and/or emails? Why can’t Mrs. Maisel end up with Lenny Bruce? Why can’t I write anymore? Why do I let something as simple as a blog frighten me from sharing my thoughts with a nonexistent audience?

I am ending this year, this decade, in obscurity, and I want to use my obscurity to develop as a writer and creator. The goal is to turn poetgoes into a scrapbook of things I love. Of random thoughts. Of pictures too pretty to be downsized to Instagram. Hit count be damned. I’m tired of the world trying to convince me that I’m missing out, that I’ve missed my “chance,” whatever that chance may be. It’s sad that my “taking my life back” moment is at the unknowing hands of the Vlog Squad and their ilk, and who knows, maybe a week from now I’ll be back at it self-consciously curating my Instagram. But I hope I’m not. I hope 2020 is the beginning of shrugging off the spectre eyes from my back.

I know it’s important to keep an audience in mind– it’s what I teach my students, it’s what I’ve been taught, even in the midsts of NYU’s determination to dismantle the concept of code-switching and validate any and all languages in any and all contexts, and so on and so forth– but can’t my audience just, for once, be me? Write the things I want to read. Make them public, sure, because I’m sick of feeling like my diary is just an echochamber of sticky sad, but still just post for me, write for me, at the center, the core, the heartstring of all of it. Without craving validation. Without craving being told: congratulations, we see you. I can see myself. I can see my world. What should I care of if others can see it too?

I live in a world, however, where every paragraph begins with the word “I.” But is this something I should feel guilty for, after years and years of looking at myself through strangers’ eyes?

It comes back to “Falling” playing to an empty arena. Not just the lyrics, though those are poignant– “What am I now? What if I’m someone I don’t want around… What if I’m someone you won’t talk about?” damn— but also just the idea of playing a song so vulnerable to a room full of empty seats– not because it needed to be heard, but because it needed to be said.

Damn, that’s a thought to sit with. And maybe I should find that old rain-noise website I used to play when it was two a.m. in the summers of high school when I still wrote my poetry on Microsoft Word docs. I want to rediscover the way I used to create. Not out of nostalgia, but out of remembering what authenticity looks like. Feels like.

So wish me luck. 2020, show me what you’ve got. God help me, I think I just might be ready.

xx,
Meg