This Is Where I Live

It has to start somewhere.

I started collecting my thoughts five years ago. Almost to date. May twenty-fourth, two thousand eighteen. May 24th, 2018. There’s something more elegant about spelling out numbers. Especially when they mean something more to you. They become part of your story. 

There’s an obsessive element to keeping your thoughts collected. I could argue that there’s an obsessive element to being a writer. But then again, I don’t know many writers. I mainly know myself. Though that I know well. 

The obsessive in me likes to reread her thoughts. And I’ve gone through plenty of nights—too many in fact—where I’ve tried to put the pieces together. Where I’ve tried to find the same clues I’ve been looking for from the very beginning. Should I have known? Was my tendency to use the internet like a modern-day private investigator helpful in any way? Did I know back then? Do I know now?

I’ve had the recurring fantasy of someone of worth finding out about said collection and asking to read it and then insisting on it being published. At times, the fantasy takes a turn—and I’m asked by this person of worth to turn the written musings into a novel. Into a fully fleshed story. This latter fantasy was the base of the first novel I started working on. Not that I finished it. Not that there was another one. Though when I picked it back up its shape transformed into something more mature. It strayed away from fact. It embraced fiction; it embraced fantasy. And yet it somehow managed to stay the same.

Someone trying to find the answer from the pieces in her own mind. Someone who for the most part of her life—throughout the ups and downs, the addictions, the lies, the blank pages—maintained one constant: being an observer of her own mind. And with doing so, understood several universal truths. One of them quite simple. That our thoughts are just our thoughts. That they are not who we are. That we have the power to turn them into anything. That we have the power of narrative. The power of introspection. That we—the privileged ones—get to be Observers.

To that degree—were the things I wrote down always true? Did I skip certain parts? The parts that I knew I wouldn’t want to reread? Did I turn my life into a story, and by doing so, did I give myself the gift of the blank page?

And if I’ve been observing the very core of who I am my whole life––then what does it mean that I chose to start my collection on May twenty-fourth two thousand eighteen?

See, that very question means nothing at all. As I’m the one who chose that date. I’m the one who tied significance to a number. And I’m the one who just asked you to see the magic behind it. 

Because it was magical to me. For it’s the first night I ever got tied up. It was the first night I felt what it meant to be desired. That I felt fantasy turn into reality. And I might not have known it back then. But I know it now. That I have the power of fantasy. That I have the power of story. 

And what does it say about me that I chose to place this much significance behind something as trivial as sex? Perhaps the sexual is not trivial at all. Perhaps it contains our deepest fears and dreams. Perhaps the body remembers.

I think great writers are those who have the power to turn fantasies into reality. To live out dreams. To coexist between two worlds.

But when you live in the in-between, is there room for real change? Or will we always live here?

Because I have always lived here.

This is where I live.