Connecting the Dots

I recall gifts piled beneath a lit Christmas tree or a birthday cake siting on our dining room table, surrounded by wrapped presents. Being the youngest in my family, I never quite had the disposable income to buy a gift, nor would I really have insight on what gift to buy out there in the real world. Rather, I had an idealistic perspective of the world in my nucleus of my own home. My home was warm, full of love and support and the three people I valued above all else. All these feelings of warmth surmounted into countless writings that became my gifts to my family. Every holiday or birthday, I would give a card or a poem or a story explicating my take on meaning, an expression I knew would touch my mother, father or brother. Thus, I suppose my earliest perspective on writing was as a gift in an unconventional sense.

As I grew older, I realized each year that this gift was not just one to give to others, but one to nurture for myself. My parents, and especially my brother, began to point out this was a unique propensity that I should explore in a more structured realm. Just at that same time, my teachers began to encourage me to submit my writings to school magazines, or share them with the class or write for the newspaper. All these outlets began to emerge as ways and reasons to write and so I delved into this new world where writing was not to make others feel, but to make others and myself think. However as I entered the academic sphere, I realized my writing, once effortlessly lively, was being strangled by rules and regulations. Academic writing, essays, short answers on exams, a cutthroat high school began to chip away at my love for written word. Like any fire, though, it could not be stifled for too long and it found another space. I began to write stories, eventually longer, my writing developed into a novel. I invested myself into the world I created in my spare time. I created elaborate character arcs, an ever-growing plotline, a research document, a quote page, and an outline, among many parts. I never thought too much about it other than an entertaining hobby. However, looking back I realize I wrote to create a more exciting reality apart the at times-stifling atmosphere of competitive high-schoolers throwing around unwelcome acronyms such as from SAT, ACT and GPA. I wrote to create a space of solace and excitement when my reality was too logical, harsh, unsatisfying.

These instances of writing were greatly dependent on a circumstantial past. They emerged out of a specific time when I needed writing to be a gift or an escape to a constantly stimulating reality. I want to focus on what writing was, is and always will be to me, even in extenuating circumstances. Writing is a way to create connections, within others and myself. I have always been a relatively closed person, even to myself at times; I do not always want to explore parts of myself that are emotionally compromising. I feel weak or unable to reach my full potential in these situations. However, I recognize it is also inefficient to keep these hindrances and emotions locked inside my mind, bouncing around and blocking out productivity. Thus, while in the past writing was a gift for others or an escape for myself, in the present it is a way to understand my reality. To show this, I will map out a progression of prose over the past two years that culminated in critical revelations for me as a writer and a person.

I use writing to explicate my own emotional situations when they become too overwhelming. We have all been strangers in our mind at times that can be scary, but it is exhilarating. We all have moments when the situation, place or people in our lives begin to invade the personal mental space we reserved for reason. In those moments, I write. This serves two purposes. Firstly, I create something productive of an otherwise unproductive situation. Instead of being upset or simply crying or vent, I write. I create at least one gem of a sentence, one connection of words that had I never been that in a tumultuous state of mind, I would have never created. And once the emotions fades and the situation become irrelevant, I still have that eloquent, charged piece of writing.

My writing chronicles times of change. I record my most overwhelming, stimulating times. Those times are often the vital moments that we learn the most about ourselves and there’s something immeasurably valuable to be able to express how I feel in those moments, and most of all, to be able to look back and relive those moments through those readings. The past two years I enveloped myself into a new world here in Michigan. To say freshman year of college was a whirlwind is underwhelming. Yet, being able to look back at the snippets of writings I documented under the ‘notes’ app in my phone gives me a fresh, raw perspective at the changes I encountered. I not only grew as a person, but as a writer. Through each experience and subsequent writing, I became more effective at conveying my emotions, even in the most difficult of situations.

The notes section on my phone is full of these post-it revelations. One of the first grapples with the issue of growing with the changing relationship with my brother as geographic and situational distances crept into our bond, one that is arguably one of, or the most, important bond in my life.

I wish I could record this year on a VCR and watch it with you. You can barely rewind on a VCR without it getting all jumbled up and caught up. That’s how I feel about my past year here; I could never do it over without ruining it all. It’s pristine, untouched in its imperfection. But there are so many moments I wish you could have seen, not been there but just seen. I would put this warm, sunny filter on the foreground of some memories. I would change the soundtrack in the background. I can make times sunnier, even if originally they couldn't have been rainier. I can paint my past technicolor and then I can make my present glow, and my future burst with neon. But we get so tangled in the rewinding and pausing and screen-shotting and freeze-framing and picture in picture that we lose the big picture in all our details. I want to go back to the times of VCR. Times when you can only move forward because any risk of looking back would ruin everything.

Often times, I don’t understand the true meaning of what I am writing as I first create it. But as I look back at many of the snippets like the one above, it could not be clearer. In this case, I was trying so hard to fit into the same box my brother and I had built for ourselves over the years, I was losing the magic of the moments we were in. By trying to pause each moment and share it in the same modes of the past, I was cheating myself of a wonderful present. I cannot guarantee I could have learned this lesson to look back on so clearly had I not written it down in this moment.

As a writer, I began to realize the power and potential in writing these moments down; although at first, I regarded it as little else but therapeutic. As I continued writing these short pieces, I was not yet aware of the theme developing. A theme of a spectrum of happiness began to emerge. As I encountered highs and lows in this new eclectic campus, I invested myself as a person and a writer in the idea of balance.

I think the most dismal prospect is for everything to go as expected. To never have those nights where everything falls apart to build up to unimaginable proportions. To never have those moments that you can never stop looking back on because nothing has been the same since. But in turn were left with the contrary. We're left to face those nights that pale in comparison to the beautifully, most unexpectedly exhilarating nights. We're left with those nights where everything did go as expected and all was lost in those mundane moments. But it's all that gray that makes the golden moment shine even brighter. There will still be those purgatory nights though. The ones where were sitting perched next to the bathroom sink, writing penniless thoughts and occasionally glancing at your own red eyes in the mirror. In those nights, that's when your hope in something gold has to be strongest. You have to believe that something good is on its way.

I feel emotionally jetlagged. Like this sadness catches up to me and I simply can't bridge the time gap between the high and low.

Because in this spectrum that I'm caught in; there is an extreme of happiness. Blissful, untainted, beautiful, dizzying happiness. And if in a reach a deep-seated sadness, I can each that profound joy.

As these writings continued and the tumultuous times began to settle into a rhythmic routine, I began to realize the true value of my time at this campus.

And then there's Michigan. With its 3 bars that would never survive for a second in NYC’s critical palate. And I’m in love with it with its depth, such life. There are no pretenses, no strained laughter- only boisterous roaring’s and a sense of love and camaraderie so strong it throbs overwhelmingly in the back of your head. There is a freedom ringing through the air that makes you believe in everything and anything, in you. It's like Pompeii frozen in a beautiful time, waiting to be rediscovered...staying the same only as long as you do.

She wouldn't spend a second of her collegiate career away from those lit streets and jagged brick buildings. She got so wound up in the haphazard feelings flying out of every experience and seeping into her pores beneath her skin. She spent some nights on rooftops, just to feel on top of the world when she felt as if she hit rock bottom...just to remember how small everything can look with some distance. And that's why we remember the highs. Sitting here now with some distance, I can only see the good rising like sky scrapers from a rock bottom. The people, the sounds, the eyes, the arms, the comfort, the hush and lull, the noise and the rush. It was all beauty to be missed and vibrancy to be remembered but never to be recreated, to relive only in moments behind shut eyelids and warm summer air.

At times, these passages grew into more elaborate prose, building off of that emotion and creating a more cohesive piece. Below is a passage taken from an extended entry.

In the endless stretches of the physical spaces we encounter, it’s easy to forget how infinite our minds are. We press away unwanted memories. We smudge away unpleasant faces. We erase the imprints of foreign snapshots. The recesses of our own minds are not bound by the finite boundaries of a thick skull. We tuck and whittle away at the unpleasant. The truth is our past is riddled by pain. Some big. Some small. All relative. We have all found loneliness in once-bright eyes. We’ve all felt ourselves shake for inexplicable reasons. We’ve all made it harder than it has to be. We are creatures subject to circumstance. That we cannot help. Time will find sadness in our past and we will place it in our future. The present is entirely ours though. I do not mean present as in this year, this month, this week, this day, this hour. I do not mean present in even this second. Circumstance pervades time. I mean present in this moment.

This moment in which my entire world is this screen. The moment earlier when I closed my eyes and let Jaime’s laugh find mine and they reverberated in unison. The moment that camera found. The one where my hair was drying in beachy waves and I smiled as you dipped what you promised that was your last pretzel in nutella. I knew it wasn’t mine. When I lay in Di’s bed later that night, looked at each of those pictures, and I could feel the sun on my bare legs again. That moment I landed I glanced out a small tight window and I saw all the flashing, lit promise of New York City. Those moments transcend time to capture a sphere of happiness.

And as the year progressed, many of these themes began to unfold then fold neatly back into themselves. It is an incredible process to look back on. These pieces all individually focusing on time, circumstance, self-worth and enduring friendships culminated into one of my favorite pieces. It is one of my favorites because it so neatly enwraps the lessons I learned as a writer and a person on how to emote eloquently. Although tangentially, it relates back to my own experiences, it was inspired by my father’s and his best friend’s friendship- a friendship that has traversed the most difficult of times. From losses of all kinds from death to heartbreak, to incredible moments of triumph, I hope to have friendships that resonate as theirs does. From that inspiration, I began to think about the relationships in my own life- my mother, father, brother and best friend.

When everything starts to move too quickly and the ground becomes molten under your very feet, that's when you'll start to appreciate the people who remain. Those who, after not seeing them for weeks or months, take off right where you left off. As if your whole world hadn't shifted and shaped itself into a new creation during that lapsed time. As if you hadn't lost and found yourself a thousand times over. All that time will shrink and fade to a single point when you see them. And in that singularity, the ground is solid beneath your feet again. Those constant faces in a sea of change will keep you afloat and treading even the most tumultuous waters. As you immerse yourself in challenges beyond your imagination, limited by what you believe is possible, the world starts to reveal opportunities beyond those limits. Time simply won't allow that future to unfold while clinging to those in your past. That's when the people who can permeate past rigid pretenses of present and past emerge. In their ability to make time irrelevant, they embed themselves into your future. They allow for you to grow and grow with the security of knowing you will always have an ever present part of your past in your unforeseeable future.

I write to discover my own story time and time again. The story that is constantly writing itself, one with the most elaborate plot twists that I will never guess and most vibrant of characters and lively of settings. I chronicle the most potent moments to the best of my shortsighted ability in the present and then begin to draw connections in the future. These chronicles, whether snippets in my phone or elaborate prose, enable me to map out my progression as a writer and a person. They have helped me understand others and myself in a much deeper sense. I write to create a space for myself where, even if I do not immediately understand it yet, I have laid out a map for my future self to connect the dots. I lay out a blueprint to be colored in and become a foundation to build myself upon.