Because the Light

I’ll be honest. I just read this article and it’s left me full of feels. I’m not nearly as eloquent as Kameron Hurley, but I want to write it out and this is my space, anyway.

I am a small person who has spent a lot of time trying to become smaller. I learned early on that lashing out gets me nowhere, so I crumple inward instead. I’m a trick of folded paper, working my way down with the ambition of being microscopic.

I shove myself into corners, lockers, pockets. Some people are devastated because others make them small, but I made myself a point charge with no mass, hovering hopelessly in the empty space I left behind me.

I don’t know why. Maybe I was afraid. Maybe I didn’t deserve all that space others seemed to so easily occupy. Maybe I just give in, like it’s my super power. Some super heroes are stone walls standing against the tidal wave, but I am cotton and snow and sand. I am packed down, packed away, forgotten at the bottoms of shoes.

I am contrary and unpleasant and I duck before you even raise a fist. Because I am afraid. Because I don’t understand the space I occupy in the world and how I’m supposed to decorate it with sparkly pink stars and scrub it clean with suds. Because I forget which part is me and which part is dirt and kick over the wrong bucket.

I’m not even sure what this has to do with that article anymore. I meant to write something about the nature of reality, about how I approach the world as a writer and fight against the cliché. About how when I feel things I don’t accept the easy description. How does this fear make you feel? And don’t say your heart is in your throat because it isn’t, that’s a thing you read, that’s a lie, how do you really feel?

And I know that fear makes me feel like glass, not the sturdy plastic kind, but the kind that ipod screens are made of, the kind that shatters from a three-inch fall. Fear is light and too much air. Fear is tectonic plates moving, ripping me apart.

Fear is wanting to delete this entire thing instead of posting it.

We are told, endlessly, to write what we are most afraid of. And we are not told what to do when we are just too afraid.

I don’t want anyone reading my words. I want to keep them small and in my head. I don't want anyone trying to pull me out and stretch my taffy flesh. And I know I need to, but it's painful and I'm none too fond of pain.

So I wrote this because I needed to explain it to myself, and maybe I'll delete it and maybe I won't. I've deleted about five different endings because none of them seemed to work, and now if I don't get to sleep I'll never get up in time for work tomorrow, so here's my last go at it.

Be what you are. And never let anyone tell you you're actually a cannibalistic llama.