Creative writing is, in my mind, the thing I live for. It is what I love most.
I continue to be crushingly mediocre at poetry and passably good at nonfiction. I have incredible fun writing vignettes, which is likely due to a childhood spent composing increasingly less-bad fanfiction, and I think my prose is best when I'm not trying to be overly clever. This is difficult, as most amateur writers I've ranted with desperately want to write cleverly and I am no exception.
I wrote 'We're All In Here' as a creative writing assignment for which the only parameters were: a) write about at least three things you like or enjoy; b) it must be over 300 words. After a semester of doing poetry assignments and short-essays, I was excited to write something longer and without prompt, even if that meant delving back into nonfiction.
Brevity may be the soul of wit, but evidently my soul has a need to drag out every story I've ever heard until it's a damn saga, so. I knew it would be meandering, extremely sentimental, and would need a central thread strong enough to tie my million brainstorming sessions back together.
I turned in my final draft of this in late 2021 - God, that feels like an eon ago already - and wasn't exactly satisfied with it, but I knew it was time to let go and focus on other things. Now I'm older, marginally better at writing (or at least, self-deluded enough to think I'm funny), and getting back into actually writing and posting on this blog I've severely neglected. I'm finally - finally! - wrapping up my first sharable draft of the novel I've been nurturing forever and beginning a PhD. What a time to be alive.
For fun, I've decided to update and post this short essay. Many names and faces have drifted out of the transom of my life since its initial drafts and the things I've been comfortable sharing with a writing class versus with the internet have similarly shifted, so subsequently this doesn't entirely reflect the state of my life as-is. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy this foray down memory lane. It is, in so many ways, a love letter to you.
________________________________
I can talk forever about the people and places I keep close to heart. Ask me what to write about and I will unfailingly return to the concept of family. I was not a demonstrably affectionate child and thus grew up afraid that I was not built for love or for belonging; as an adult I have become someone who drops "love" at the end of every phone call, never leaving without firm bone-clenching hugs, my head propped over someone else's right shoulder. I will listen to long rants about your innermost secrets, I will drop adoration promptly at your feet. If I love you - if I believe that you care for me - I will treat you with the utmost care and attention. I want people to be fiercely loyal to, to be fiercely loyal to me. Let me cut out my heart, measure my life by the span of yours, twist myself such that our bends in the road meet and run the same direction. I am hard to shake, if you let me love you. I grab hard and tight and fast.
My family - oh, if you know me at all, you know that I cannot shut up about them - is a wonderful invention built and scraped together over years. If I were to liken them to anything, I think it would be to a clock: all pieces cogging in their own ways, different in size and function, but together they're right on time, a united face that can always be counted on.
If my family is anything, they are reliable. They are the kind of people who are adamant on sticking together, on fighting the good fight and not letting go. This is why we continue to send out Christmas cards, to talk on the phone with even the most distant of relatives often, why when we move we move together. My parents are involved in my life as much as they can be, sending me home cooked meals in disposable tupperware and giving me more sweaters I don't need. My little brother is prickly and stubborn, the very picture of a crotchety old man, but despite how much he pretends to hate me he reaches out for help with chemistry homework, talks to me about his new favorite books. I no longer live with them, but I stop in as often as I can. I never want to be unreachable.
We are a lot. We are all strong willed and strong opinioned; we trample over each other's feelings but offer to kill anyone who hurts my brother, insults my mother. To me, love is spelled out in action. My grandfather helped us hang ceiling fans in our home in Georgia, driving hundreds of miles with an aching back to do so. In tenth grade my father took me out to ice cream at one in the morning when he saw me crying in the kitchen over something a boy said at school.
My mother makes chicken noodle soup and holds me even though she is bad at words and makes everything worse when she tries to comfort someone like that. My grandmother will offer adages, my Uncle Scott will awkwardly pat your hand, my Uncle Gregg will send a funny Hallmark card with words he doesn't write but does think. Uncle Roy will make a joke that isn't funny but does inexplicably make you feel a bit better. It is give and take, push and pull with all of them. It is a family beyond blood and bone, buried deep in intentional care. Life has made it abundantly clear that not everyone has this, so I am all the more thankful for them.
"You know how you just feel uncomfortable around your dad sometimes?" my roommate had asked me in our sophomore year of college. She was perfectly calm, telling a story about the last time she'd gone home to see her parents. I opened and closed my mouth, debating whether or not to lie to her.
Of the ten people I talked to regularly in high school, four had alcoholic fathers. Of the women I had befriended by my sophomore year of college, this figure evolved to five out of seven.
My father is by no means perfect. When he is angry - truly, fully angry - the whole house trembles with the weight of his gray, unshakable storm clouds. He will be deadly quiet until he is abruptly loud; he will forcefully throw his phone down and yell at the television and gesture madly with his hands before going on a meandering walk. But even when he's angry, even when he wants to crawl out of his own skin, he listens. He's not unreachable. Maybe it's because when he's mad, he's rarely mad because of me; maybe it's because in all other areas of life he gives off a calm and collected exterior and reigns in his finer feelings. Either way, I have never been afraid of my father. I have never avoided him when we pass in hallways, never felt unable to come to him even when he was in a dark mood.
My father has never beaten me. I have never been assaulted by a man. These are not things that I can say for five out of the seven women I'd met in college.
My roommate has had so many people agree with her before. Yes, I know exactly how you feel, being at home scares the shit out of me.
"No, I don't know what you mean," I finally told her. "You shouldn't feel scared to be around your dad." I knew from her myriad of stories what 'uncomfortable' meant. She meant that he made her fear for her life, that being around him induced a panic born of concrete traumas others often brushed off or disregarded.
Emma says 'uncomfortable'. Once he almost killed her and she never told their mother. Whenever he would get drunk on a business trip all hell would break loose and now she cannot be in a room with him without remembering screaming, punching, fresh bruises.
At the end of that semester I offered her my house for the summer. She nearly accepted, but then her mother called her home and her boyfriend wanted her around and she'd smiled, telling me she'd come another time, but happiness didn't reach her eyes.
There is no terror in my house. I went home to a family that has always made me feel safe with their cheesy renditions of popular songs, their watching and re-watching of bad movies, their endless stream of inside jokes. Emma went back to hell.
I don't want to believe that I am just the lucky one, but five out of seven is hard to argue with.
A brief reminder: no wounds are too great for you to not deserve love. There's no such thing as broken, no standard metric for what is acceptable or right or just. Although we often accept the love we think we deserve, that doesn't mean that you are limited to the scraps of what people are willing to give you. Take no prisoners, do your worst. Give people the opportunity to do their best in turn.
My family is much greater than the sum of its basic components. An ever-evolving machination, it needs stabilizers and operators, manipulators that work to grasp and move objects. Here is where my friendships shine.
Jacob knows two languages fluently and can speak and recognize pieces of another two. He is soft-spoken, he loves baking and long nights of driving, and he can turn any terrible day into a better one. Give him a computer problem and he will solve it; show him a picture of a baby duck and he will fall all over himself.
He is unfailingly kind, impossibly thoughtful, and extremely clever. One of my biggest accomplishments as a person is that he calls me his best friend.
We have adopted him into our family thoroughly and with no intentions of relinquishing him. At first he was just my school friend in the eyes of my parents; now he is a surrogate son of a fashion. We were the ones that threw him a birthday party before he moved to Germany, the ones who celebrated his scholarship arrangement, the ones who decorated cookies with him on Christmas Eve. My father asks him about his grades, my mother compares her travel stories to his, my little brother rants to him about his coveted video games.
Jacob is my best friend not because of how much I love him, but because he makes me feel like the best possible version of myself. I am proud of myself and the person I'm becoming when he looks at me; when he told me in the passenger's seat of my car that he's never felt more welcome than he did at my house, I was relieved. People like Jacob - people who come by your house with a self-curated mix tape when you're sad, people who return your tupperware with lemon bars just because they were thinking of you - are few and far between. They deserve the very best of life. The fact that he hasn't received it kills me.
He sends me pictures from Germany. I send him poorly written comedy sketches that make him snort at three in the morning. Together we get along.
My relationship with my mother is the most ambitious to unpack by far. Our dynamic is not as cut-and-dry as the mutual respect my father and I share or the sibling rivalry my brother and I perpetuate. As with most mother-daughter relationships, we are often at odds, but despite this she is my favorite person. Given that this is an essay about those I love most, that kind of favoritism packs a heavy punch.
From what I've gleaned growing up, her parents' relationship was sometimes a partnership and more often a contentious pairing sustained by the children they shared and the lifestyle they had in common. My mother is the product of such a union; I admire her for not resenting the chaos of her upbringing, but it has imparted in her some less-than-healthy parenting strategies that I hope will not be passed along. She is blunt with everyone, almost to the point of cruelty on occasion. Her anger at things will be uncorked at the most inconvenient and irrelevant of times. She refuses help despite wanting it and will resent small mistakes as personal offenses. She has a natural distrust of others that saddens me. As one of the people who love her most, I spend a lot of time - and have always spent a lot of time - trying to understand her better, to mitigate her reasons for frustration. I am the oldest child, the only daughter. Often I take the responsibility of mediating every conflict between our core family group onto my shoulders, whether the burden seems fairly levied or not. I hear it's a commonality amongst hispanic daughters.
I know that despite our issues, my mother loves me. She loves me so much she wants me to be strong towards the world, to never let anyone have something to criticize about me. To ensure that I would be invulnerable, she became my biggest support and most daunting challenge. Today, she is just as anxious and overprotective as she was when I was little, but our epic confrontations are lesser. A great deal of this carefully balanced neutrality can be attributed to the fact that I've moved out, and absence really does make the heart grow fonder. Our relationship as it is now is very intentional, very strong, formed brick by brick by brick.
She's funny, she's smart, she's willing to destroy anyone who wrongs me. I can watch atrocious rom coms with her and it's never too late to call home. Her vegetable soup is always incredible, and her black beans are incomparable. Even at our worst, I always know that things will smooth out.
She's always there when I need her. You can't ask for more than that.
Any universe in which black beans and rice exist can't be all bad. If you're ever feeling particularly conflicted, my advice is to shut up and eat beans. Afterwards you'll feel much better about your place in the grand design.
(A full stomach helps with most things.
Looking at you, Jacob.)
Though it seems obvious, family is not limited to your relatives. It is the people who see you, feel you, love you as best as they can. I love my college roommate, I love my best friend Jacob. There is something to love in all my friends-turned-family.
I adore Anthony because he is always kind, always willing to help, and because he helped pick me up when I was in a car crash two Septembers past, bringing me coffee and sitting with me on the curb until the police arrived. Janie has constant enthusiasm for classes, for making new foods, for telling me an abundance of animal facts; I know so much more about the world - and about the domestication of dogs - than I ever thought possible. Lucy is terrible at comfort but great for cathartic ranting; she'll listen to you any time of day and will not stop talking to you until she or her phone is dead. Lucy will move mountains if you ask her to. Jack is a pain in the ass but he's a surprisingly good friend, the type of person who is prickly all over and will relentlessly tease you but will let you have the last french fry or walk you home at midnight when you're most afraid. Alysa is compassionate to a fault, Seven is quite possibly the nicest space alien you'll ever meet, and Marine is just goodness personified. I have met few people who are effortlessly nice.
My best friend from middle school and I reconnected roughly six years ago now. She had been going through a particularly hard time and, due to her ongoing struggle with clinical depression, felt unable to reach out and let her friends learn about her burdens. After several years of no contact, half of which I spent semi-regularly texting a number that I feared was disconnected, she called and we scheduled lunch. With anyone else, this may have been an awkward reunion, but for us the joy of seeing eachother after so long apart overshadowed all else. We forgot to talk about anything of importance despite all the questions I had had for her, the things I had wondered about during her extended absence. It all seemed irrelevant.
Marisa is by no means all better. She goes through periods of stability and those of emotional and physical turmoil, and during medication switches the disparity between the two is all the more apparent. The only difference between now and middle school is that we've stayed in touch through her worst struggles and mine, and I count myself very grateful to have people like her - like Jacob, like Lucy, like all of them - in my life.
The friends I consider my closest now are very different from who they were even a year ago. I am very young and stupid, but unfortunately not naive enough to believe that I will take the friendships I prize so highly into the next two, three, four decades. It's easy to fall into the nihilistic pattern of seeing connections as only temporary and fleeting, and to some extent you have to be realistic about the longevity of relationships built in your teenage years, in your twenties, in your thirties. My mother is an intense cynic about the utility and nature of friendships; she openly hates people on the whole and would spend all of her time avoiding them if it was possible. I have been crushed by many interpersonal disappointments and thus understand her reservations, but in my mind, the transient nature of people is what makes the effort invested into relationships all the more vital.
How does anyone want to look back on the way they treated those surrounding them? If you're going to build any bridge, give it the best possible foundation and do your best to make it last. I would much rather be too much than too little, and much rather say that I was a candle burned than the wick left unlit.
(Perhaps I too will become jaded. But I am not jaded yet.)
Emma calls me crying from time to time. I always answer; she always apologizes for calling so late.
She really needs to stop that. Calling out for help is about as universal an experience as it gets.
Three years ago my inorganic chemistry lab ran far too long. I'd made plans to get dinner with two friends at five; as I left the lab, it was approaching seven thirty. Winter hadn't given away to spring yet and the wind was especially cold, the kind of crisp that precedes snow. I was wearing two jackets and I was still freezing as I made the trek towards the nearest dining hall, spilling a stream of 'sorry sorry sorry' into my texts. I asked if both of them were still there; they said yes, they were, and I was immediately relieved that even if I was the only person eating, I wouldn't be alone.
When I got to the building, I saw Anthony and Janie waiting at an umbrella-covered table near the main doors. They waved as they saw me.
"Sorry again for the millionth time," I'd told them. "I feel bad making you sit around if you've already eaten, I didn't realize you'd already left the cafeteria."
"Don't worry about that," Anthony had snorted. "We haven't gone in yet."
A small fact about me: I can be extraordinarily anxious when I want to be. When I agonize over something it will pop up in my head at the most inopportune times, broadening the universal hole in my stomach. I will think often about social faux-paus I have made, letting them go only after years of rigorous examination. If there is such a word for the opposite of social anxiety, this is one of the few instances I can vividly recall experiencing it.
"You guys just waited out here for over two hours?" I'd asked, incredulous.
"Of course! We wouldn't go in without you," Janie had said. No hesitation, no conscious thought. Pure, unadulterated fact.
I almost cried, there. I love people a lot; the fact that they love me back registers only in brief, powerful moments that tend to slap me in the face when I least expect them to.
My friend group is rowdy and does not respect boundaries at all. They're easy to love and hard to stand at times, but they're good people. At the end of the day, I really couldn't ask for more than for friends who are willing to wait for me on an unbearable night like that one.
"You're the best," I told them, because otherwise I would have said something far more sappy and undoubtedly true.
"I don't know about that, but we are pretty hungry," Janie replied.
We walked inside together. The food was awful; the company was impeccable.
The best day of my life happened when I was too young for my head to reach the headrest in my father's hatchback. We still lived in North Carolina and cherry blossom petals rained down over the front windows all summer, nature's best pink confetti. We went shopping, my father and I. We were out all afternoon running errands for my mother, going to Michael's and Lowes and Costco. I looked at paint swatches while my dad got lumber and lightbulbs, the world smelling of metal and dust. It took a long time; I was not bored for a second of it. I was my father's helper, his grown-up girl. He got me a Costco hot dog for being so patient and let me carry the soda in my lap. There is nothing better than a cold Pepsi on a hot, humid day.
When we got home, half the cup was already gone. I carried in the Michael's bag and I didn't spill the soda and my mother put all the groceries on the counter. Afterwards she hugged me, asked me how the store was. I'd told her that a trip to Costco is always a good one and she'd smiled widely at me, ruffling my hair out of its ponytail. The kitchen we were in was all white tile and laminate countertops, the stereotypical kitchen of a starter house. The blinds were open, flooding everything with golden light. You could see the bright bluebell of the sky outside in slivers, in slices.
I was happy. Truly, fully, incandescently happy.
Nothing out of the ordinary occurred that day; ask my parents about it and they won't remember anything about the shopping trip, won't understand why I still think about it. I can't explain it fully, not even to myself, but that was the best day. Going home with a cold Pepsi and a Costco hot dog to get a hug is, in my mind, the marrow of life.
Here is the worst of me: I am growing more and more impatient by the day. I will never stop talking, even when you most wish I would. I will push you every goddamn minute. It will be hard, it will be uncomfortable, but when I get to know you I'll try to pull every secret out of you until there's nothing left to hide. I am not content with not knowing something; I will feel awful when I inevitably push too far. I want affirmation that I'm wanted, and once I get it I will want constant attention. I want praise, I want kindness, and I will crave affection like a drug once you give me a taste. I could blow up my life if forced; I know exactly what will hurt you most. I have strong, silly opinions. I will judge you based on your movie choices.
Despite this, I think I am capable of extraordinary good. We all are, even if we do not chase after it very often. I love children, I love volunteering, I love simply sitting and listening to someone who needs to speak. For all that I rant, I am a good listener. I pay attention to people; I'll consistently get birthday gifts months in advance because I am constantly thinking of how something will make someone smile, how this gift will be exactly what they didn't know they wanted. I am very good at giving; I am well practiced in it. I'd like to think I'm a fast learner, that I am empathetic enough to comprehend new concepts and new people quickly and plainly. I'll never make you sit awkwardly on the fringes of a party. I'll never not pick up the phone. I'm open and honest about my day and my feelings; I want to be clearly understood and taken at face value. I'll share everything I have with you. I am good at stretching my heart to make room for someone new.
The thing is, I am the product of my family, and I do not love it blindly. I love it in all its awful, in all its complications, in all the things it chooses to cherish. We are not perfect, but we try. Against all odds, we care.
To anyone out there: If you're lonely, I'm willing to wait. Come over here, I'll put on the kettle and pull out stuff for sandwiches. Whenever you want, it's never too late. I'll sit up for you.
I'll leave the light on.
