Getting started here feels a bit like a first date. Will they like me? What if I say the wrong thing?
I’ve had a crush on the idea of writing almost my entire life. Sadly, until recently, it was only in my earlier, uninhibited years that I sat down to write. I penned poems, short stories, even letters to myself and others, each and every piece offering one more peek at the heart and soul within.
In my later, paraprofessional years, my interest in words proved useful in my role as a legal assistant. For those unfamiliar with legal writing, every word, every speck of punctuation, not only does but needs to serve a proper purpose. Over time, I gradually but undeniably morphed into an over-thinker, while the creative one inside me withered and retreated behind some unmarked, forgotten door. Occasionally, there would be a creative spark that would dance across my mind’s stage, but like a firefly in the night, it was here and then nothing, gone.
Decades later, my outer self now the one withering with age, the dormant creative one within longs to reemerge. Like the Yin to the Yang that makes a whole, I know her growing presence can add color and offset the muted gray. Even though she’s timidly struggling to find her voice, it’s obvious the creative one is desperately demanding to be heard.
Pondering those whispered fragments that now call to my waking ear, one point, an aha moment, suddenly becomes clear: this first date nervousness is not about future visitors I may not know; it’s the visionary awareness this long-estranged but familiar one can bring to my world. One step closer to my inner truth, I now realize it’s not so much the creative one who needs me; it’s me who needs her.
Like that first love who haunts the thoughts and visits in dreams, I’ve long inwardly sensed her presence and frequently wondered who we might have been. But now, after all these years, here we are, face to face, heart to heart once again. We’re both older and wiser; time appears to have been kinder to her ability to dream.
After waiting a lifetime to be honored and understood, I hope my dear creative one is patient and forgiving enough to help me find my way to me again.
© 2019 HSE
Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash.
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