Did this text reach you? Can you read this clearly? I know it's strange to ask given you're already on the page, but it's been a while since I've used this medium to connect and that's what I've always sought to do - connect. In my short life of pandemonium, I've written words. Hundreds and thousands and probably millions of tiny little words. Words that don't always come to me consciously. Words that I overhear in train carriages or at the backs of crowded spaces; words that puzzle me and drive me crazy given the infinite consequences of their meaning; words that glue themselves to the nerves of my mind, staying with me forever unlike so many people or places or items of clothing that disintegrate after too many washes in the coin laundry I still use in my late thirties. Words in song, words on pages of my journals, of other people's journals – published journals, I'm not a creep. Words in text messages, in letters, on postcards. God I love the surprise of postcards. Words that I composed as poems for people who will never read them because frankly death isn't as terrifying as that. Words that other people used in a way I thought was incorrect but kinda hot, and so I've repurposed them and continued to bastardize them. (I remember in 2009 I learned that the word “shower” could mean “cool”. I have since unlearned that.) Words that are clear, words that are obtuse, words that feel like they've arrived to me in a conversation via a five-year-long game of Chinese whispers. Is that a verbal typo?!
I think about words a lot more than most people probably, which is why I'm mostly alone on this spinning ball of chaos. Words got in my way, but they also offered me a way out. I've used words to manifest my ideas like yeast in a dough, and sometimes my words are too much and holes form and collapse my life, and other times they're not strong enough and life chugs along slowly as the terrain dries out faster than I can make my journey to any destination (I'm not sure which, but please are we there yet?). We are so bombarded with words. Words are everywhere, in great abundance, on the post-it notes, some struck-through, and it's in how we catch the words and reorganize them and receive them and repeat them that we can form new ways of existing or thinking or understanding one another. It is a gift to know words, to use words, and ultimately to share words. People's words are what impresses me about them the most. They could be coming out of a goblin with traffic cones for horns and severe halitosis but if they're perfect words then hello where have you been all my life. “It's only words.” But words are everything. Anyway, enough with the Bee Gees crap.
Sometimes the words make people feel good. In 2012, I could write a review of a band's first EP and the words made them act like The Beatles. And while my words were obviously epic, like Keats if he cared about Blue WKD and Topshop, it wasn't really about my words, but where my words lived – in a place that mattered to them. Sometimes the words make people furious. In 2021, I could volley them into an ocean of razor blades and become the meme who no longer had the right to her own name. It wasn't really about my words, but how they could be weaponized – against anyone insane enough to fight back. Sometimes the words make people understood. The words become like mirrors coming clearer after a lifetime fogged-up or smudged with fingerprints. The words unlocked a Rubik's Cube that those without the words (let’s call them, the wordless) had been doing for a thousand days and I had arrived at the last square a little faster. Click! Again it wasn't really about my words, but how they could bring people (the wordless) to life.
In January, I was going through a self-help phase. Because that's what January is for. Self-help wouldn't be a boom without depression and depression's Christmas is January. So I was reading all the words. I read “How To Do The Work” by Dr Nicole LePera. She writes about trauma in the body and emotional addiction:
“Our subconscious leads us into situation where we can get that hit in increasingly powerful doses: unpredictable relationships, news media that leave us feelings scared and angry, social media that allow us to pick fights online. This is why we are drawn to vent to friends and chronically complain: these behaviours help us remain in a heightened state. Nonactivated peace is dull and unfamiliar. Our body and mind seek the familiar, even if it is painful, and many of us are left ultimately feeling ashamed and confused by our behaviour.”
It made me think of words. Can we be addicted to words? Social media interacts with our emotional addiction and a need to feel perpetually outraged. Who wants peace? I did. So I quit social media right then. I didn't want to waste my words on my own vices any more. I wanted to connect. Where is the connection in perpetual outrage? I don't want to scream and be screamed at. I want to sing. I want to whisper. I want to think out loud. I want to recite the words of scholars. I want to be Virginia Woolf reading aloud “A Room Of One's Own” in 1928.
In the privacy of my words, I have wondered who wants them and why. Will they matter again, and for what purpose. I have spent months and years with words living in my head but they don't matter to anyone else unless I share them. So am I reaching you? Can you read me clearly? OK well then we can connect.
It’s so nice to read your words again. I’ve missed them.
Vulnerability is the foundation for connection. Thank you.