Finding a Voice

        it's always been hard for me to write. it's always been hard for me to "have a voice." my thoughts are paced, so far apart, and disorganized. but maybe everyone's thoughts are like that, too. i never had any real dreams, growing up. no real interests. no real likes. i feel like i grew up being a bystander to my own life. there was nothing that stuck to me. i look back to my childhood with the first feeling to arise being disgust, because of how devoid my own life felt to be of, well, my own life. i was surounded by things that i had to appreciate, but i never felt of them as things to appreciate. my youngest interests included television: the cartoons of pbs kids, hasbro, and cartoon network. and, crafting art.

        but i know i liked performing. i liked making people laugh. i liked making people happy.

        the things i dont remember are my failures to make friends. apparently, in preschool, there was a girl i wanted to be friends with so badly. i tried to send her letters through the mail, with no address to deliver to. i think of those memories, and see myself in third person. and i already know what that means (dissociation). i remember videos of people talking about how sometimes, humans block out the bests of their childhoods to make sure that their self only remembers the bad things, to, apparently, stay unforgiving to a perpatrator of abuse. the purpose being, i assume, to foster hatred; to escape them. but, as you grow older (and more capable) people ususally come to the conclusion, what purpose does this hatred serve, really? maybe i need to let it go?

        i remember liking to play in the dirt outside our apartment, in the water. in the mud. i remember i was wonderous when it hailed. it feels like the first and last time i experienced it.

        it's always been hard for me to enjoy literature. i rarely resonate with others. i don't remember how it used to feel before writing this, as we speak, but i've realized how i feel about it in the now. a lot of the time, other people's lives and experiences just feel like caricatures to the life i call my own. rarely any experiences felt plausibly ... "healthy" when in comparison to my own. i grew up in what i'd describe as pseudo-poverty. my mother competed in compititions, dressed up, preformed, earned awards, a name for herself. she expereienced what so many strive for, "fame." story in short, maybe she didnt have enough of it, or maybe it was because she had me, but it didn't amount to anything in my life. we grew up, suffocating in her relics. i learned early on that vanity doesn't mean anything, if you don't make the most of it.

        i know i like love.

        so i'm trying to let my hatred go. but its daunting, and i am someone who forgets like there was no yesterday and slips like there's no tomorrow. im strange, there are both moments where my heart is open to total reception and moments where it remains clamped shut and sealed, airtight. there are moments of grand inspiration, and then there is nothing.

i hope i'm doing it right.