What I Know

A short essay written for my College Writing class, on who I am at this mo' and I as a writer. Also posted to my blog, www.saheistand.com.

 

As I went to cyber-school for the last two years of my high school existence, I missed out on the rapid fire of MLA format, persuasive essays, and notations that in junior high seemed all too force fed. Realizing that I was fiercely unprepared for college, my defense mechanism to act instinctively—or to pretend I knew what I was doing, when I so obviously knew that I didn’t. When I feel the need to write (or I want to), I go with ye olde cliché “write what you know”—with a twist. I think of myself as an empathetic person, so I found this formula of “knowing what the heck I’m talking about” easy. To become the character, the emotionally person involved or narrator, you gotta be the character. You’re square, you’re there and it’s simple after that. Though my teachers of the past have not been pleased, I blend my speaking voice with my creative writing style to reflect on my professional one. I feel that in order to be a writer—good, bad, or ugly—you must be, to some infinitesimal point, a solipsist. You must believe you’re the only one in the galaxy who will touch this page. The writer must be true to her beliefs, ideas, and fancies and none too excited about persuading someone else, yet she must persuade herself of what is going on. If it is truly believed by the writer then the words drum out naturally.

My writing more than reflects a creative tendency, but a wayward lifestyle, as well. I have lived under multiple roofs, and I feel that I have lived someone else’s life each year. Of course, I would love to stay in one spot and evolve. Yet without knowing what it is like to be left to my own devices or kicked out, I would have no material as a writer. I am an adult now and it’s time to create my own existence instead of growing into the opportunity of blame placed before me. Often my inner voice speaks to me from age six to nine, when things had felt connected and nothing could be construed as possibly more exciting than Scholastic Bookstore Day. I feel this is my objective voice and who I truly used to be. Nowadays I feel that I am just acting out a role; the bohemian, the daughter, the college kid.

            For only being at college for a week, I must say that if I ever knew who I was, I was cruelly, disconcertingly wrong. Before I stepped on campus permanently, I was convinced by others that I was immovably dependent, sentimental, and inhibited. Since I have moved out of my father’s house a year ago, I have made great headway in becoming better in those respects. Well, I was sure that I was. Whereas I had been obese, lazy, and uninspired, I became obsessed with challenging myself. I lost forty pounds, took up accordion, wrote and self-published a book, and produced and hosted an online radio show. I could not recognize myself then, and I cannot recognize myself now. I now walk freely across campus without a giggling mass in tow and have no reservations about eating a Caesar salad by myself underneath a tree in full view. I wrote a whimsical essay comparing Edwin A. Abbott’s Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions to They Might Be Giants’ song “Particle Man” for no reason. If I do feel the need to hang out, I have ten platonic guys’ numbers in line who do not become emotionally or physically attached. Unlike the other girls in my residence hall, I do not miss home, wherever it is or will be, and so far I find that I am at the happiest in my life.