Five Years of Unfinished Stories

When I read the words in faded pencil, the ones hidden behind a shiny pink and grey cover, I feel nothing. I think, maybe I was lying. Maybe it was the naivety of late childhood, the subconscious filter that is at ease but uninspired, the one derived from Hollywood films and a lack of imbedded self-loathing. Our voice is born from many mothers: from the authors in novels read before our attention span is devoured by a storm of caffeine and social media - the only medicine we know to quiet the words inside; from the boys we have loved, but only from afar, as our reflection wastes away, melts into a sea of muddy water, so thick that it shatters the glass; from the other girls, too, who have cried with us, who have been remembered, and forgotten, and cherished, and hated. Our voice changes, we lose little bits of ourselves with every chapter. But with death, comes depth, and the pain gives way to a new sort of life - a life of many colors, but always and forever against the backdrop of darkness. Color, while beautiful, is fragile. Color is shallow water, color is washed away in the river, dried up in the drought, drunk by the men who live to entertain us. But darkness, she is a still lake, with depths unreached; she holds life, and feeds it, and we drown in her arms. And, in the end, she is the only one who has loved us as we are, for all our brokenness, for our bare skin, our unclothed bodies, for every scar.

That first journal, covered in flowers, was the beginning of something that would consume me for the rest of my adolescence. I didn't know the power which I held in my ink-stained fingers, and it began to terrify me. As my mind unraveled, the words spilled faster across each line. Sometimes, I wondered if the words were from my own mind, or something separate...something outside. Something...inside? I hadn't thought these words. But reading them, they felt right. The writing grew darker, and now I think it was a way to consolidate everything ugly, to lock away my darkest thoughts into the safety of immortality, a place no one would ever see them. It was as if I could drown them there and let them out. A way to empty my thoughts, so the inside would feel a little lighter. Writing isn't pretty. Writing is messy, and it's almost ironic how unpoetic these secrets can be. But to watch yourself change, to read your story in all its violent beauty, this is the completion of imperfection, the binding of a book. This is the voice.