There are things that I know I should write about. There are causes and movements that I know could use my voice. I'm under no illusions that my voice is particularly special or important, but I know that there are topics that need a voice, any voice. Over the years, I've worked hard to find a way to express my thoughts and experiences in a way that people will want to read them. It's what I go to school to do, so I should be at least sort of good at it. I know in my heart that I should use this gift to talk about big, scary topics.
One of the most important qualities of creative expression is that it moves people to feel something. The most amazing class that I've ever taken at Drexel was called Creative Nonfiction Writing. It was all about writing creative personal narratives. I did some of my best work in that class under the careful guidance of my professor and the encouragement of my classmates. In order to learn, we read a ton of essays and personal narratives that honestly changed my life.
When I read Eula Biss, "Time and Distance Overcome," about how the rise of telephone poles coincided with the lynchings of African Americans, I got angry. So angry, in fact, that I literally threw the book across the room, got under my blankets, and angry cried for a solid hour and a half. I go back to it every time that I lose sight of my privilege.
When I read Jo Ann Beard's, "The Fourth State of Matter," about the shooting at the University of Iowa, I felt a deep sense of loss along with the author. I was reading in the bathtub with candles and bubble bath, as I often do, when one line hit me like a truck: "Silence. No matter how much you miss them. They never come back once they're gone." I remember closing the book and placing it on the floor outside of the tub, tears streaming down my face. I laid in that tub and turned the line over in my head again and again until the last tea candle burned out and all the bubbles had dissolved.
Two months later, a good friend from high school died suddenly of a brain tumor and the first thing I did was reach for that piece again, to try to make sense of a senseless tragedy. Two weeks ago, the first and only girl to make me feel like I belonged with the "cool kids" was in a car crash and is still in critical condition. Two nights ago, I realized the gravity of the situation and reached for the piece again, hoping that it would give me as much comfort that night as it had in nights past. The beautiful thing is that it did.
Art -- which I define as any creative expression -- makes you confront emotions. And often in that confrontation, there is healing. Sometimes, all you need to do is cry. Sometimes, all you need is to know that there is someone else living who has experienced the thing that you're pretty sure will kill you. Sometimes you need to see how other people cope. More often than not, you need the validation that what you're going through is so not trivial that it's worthy of being written about.
Three nights ago, a girl at a bar told me that she admired me for being so open and sharing my stories. She said that she had tried to write for The Odyssey, but stopped after a few weeks, citing my exact fears as the reason. She flipped her hair out of her face and leaned over the banister that was separating us.
"The thing is," she began, delicately stirring her drink with a straw, "I don't care if a thousand strangers on the internet read what I write. I just couldn't share it and have people I know read it," she shrugged and then gave me one more hug, "You're just so brave," she said in my ear, squeezing tight and letting go.
But even after that, I don't feel brave. I feel sort of like a fraud because there's so much more I want to write about. There's so much more that I want to say, things that need to be said. There's a chance that I could give someone the validation that I have so desperately sought over and over again. And yet, I haven't.
We all have parts of our lives or experiences that we want to keep a secret from those that we love. If a million strangers on the internet read my story about kissing strangers at a bar, I couldn't care less, but telling those stories to my dad? Absolutely horrifying. If a million strangers read my deepest darkest fears, it's OK, because they don't know me. But when people who know me are going to read it, it becomes that much harder to tell stories that are already difficult on their own.
There are things that we know we should write about. They are things that are hard to say, but someone has to say them, and it's about time that we all stop making excuses or being too scared of what other people may think. Our stories are important. It's high time we take control and use them.
