A Beating Heart

For so many years, I have had a specific feeling. It usually pops up at the sound of new music or at two in the morning when I want to sleep, but that is neither here nor there. I have been trying to pin it down, and after too many cups of coffee today, I think I finally have. I want to share it with you.

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     They tell me that this wild thing that beats in my chest must be panic.

     “Calm down,” They tell me. “Stop worrying, take a breath.”

     I frown at them. Do they not know? Have they not felt it? This thing that beats in my chest, this wild, uncontrollable tempo, is not panic. It is not anxiety. It is not something to be tamed or pushed aside like so much baggage.

     This thing, this wild thing that dances through my lungs is nothing more or less than life itself.

At times it lurks, in the back of my brain and in the secret places of my soul, but there are times when it comes soaring, swooping, flying wildly to the front, sending my heart racing and my head spinning and my limbs fairly tremble with the force of it.

     “Take deep breaths,” They tell me kindly. “Feel my pulse,”

     Their hearts plod along at the pace of an old car, puttering steady and soft with a quiet purpose that I cannot always have. It is boring. 

     My heart flutters like a bird, and I feel caged. I am trapped under expectations and polite disinterest, orders to “Sit still,” and “Calm down,” and they beg me to be normal, to be as I am expected to be.

     Can they not feel it? When was the last time their hearts beat with abandon, with wild happiness that is so much life that they could not explain?

     Can I explain?

     This thing, this uncontrollable feeling, it beats in my heart and explodes from my fingers, from my hands and my feet and my mouth. It overflows.

     Can they not feel it?

     The rain on my face, the wind in my hair, the feeling of grass and dirt and rocks under me, feet callused with days spent wandering, cheeks red from sun-and-wind, hair drenched with rain-and-lake-and-river, pavement vibrating with thousands-and-hundreds of footsteps, walls echoing with cries and laughter, grief and happiness in equal measure, and

     My. Heart. Beats.

     So fast. 

     The crinkle of paper, the smell of baking, of spices and fresh-cut-lawn and motor oil. The feeling of tears tracking down my cheeks, the sound of laughter of a loved one, the sigh of frustration from a stranger, of new-music-soon-to-be-memorised and old-music-worn-down.

     We were given five senses for a reason, and it is a crime to go through life only using two or three at a time.

     Open your eyes. See the blue in the sky and red flowers, vibrant spring-green grass and patterns in the trees, among their branches and among their bark.

     Breathe deep. Raise your head to the wind and smell the things that the breeze has brought you, remember the smell of your father’s cologne, of an old book or a new one, of coffee and sugar and Christmas.

     Why are you walking through life with a half-beating heart and dull senses? Wake up!

     Can you feel it now?

     “Calm down,” They tell me, “Sit still,” they reprimand.

     Why? 

     This thing, this wild thing that beats in my chest is not panic, it is not fear, it is life.

     “Breathe deep,” They tell me.

     I already am. Are you?

Writing

Writing is hard. 

When I write, I write to make sense of the world. I write when I’m stressed, when I want to make decisions, when I’m happy, excited, or upset. I have journals and folders and scraps of paper that are filled with words explaining my thoughts and ideas and telling stories. 

But sometimes, wrangling those 26 letters into what you want to say is just so hard. That little cursor can just sit and blink at you for hours and nothing will be written, and with every second that passes, you get more frustrated. I can’t tell you how many word documents have started out with variations of the word “ARGH” because I just can’t get my internal dictionary under control. You trip over every syllable and delete more than you write. 

I think part of the problem is that we tend to write under the impression that we have to impress someone else. We write with the fear that everyone who reads it will be disappointed. We write for everyone else. 

That is wrong. We shouldn’t write for others. We should write for ourselves. Write what we want to hear, write what we need to read, because there is a very large chance that there are people out there who need to hear the exact same thing. The truth has a habit of sneaking onto paper when we aren’t looking, even if we didn’t know we were writing it. 

You see, writing is not a point A to point B activity. When you write, feel free to skip around. Start in the middle and skip to the beginning. Write the last paragraph first, say something that has no context anywhere else but your brain. After word vomit, go back and edit. It will all be okay. You don’t like the whole thing? Start over. 

No one can tell you when, where, and how to write. The best thinking times are in the car or in the shower. Paper is a non-judgemental surface, and you can say anything, anything you want, even if it’s just ‘no no no no’ over and over again. 

After all, that’s why I’m writing now. I had nothing to say, and as my wise english teacher Miss. Adams used to say, “Say something.” It doesn’t even have to be profound. It can be ‘I like donuts.’ 

Just write. 

Paper

To me, the most exciting thing in the world is a piece of blank paper. And yeah, I can hear you thinking, ‘paper’s OK, but why is it so awesome?’ I’ll tell you why. That piece of paper has so much potential. A piece of blank paper has the most potential in the entire world.

A piece of paper can be printed on. It can become a checklist, or an essay, or a book. It can turn into a newspaper. It can be a sign, telling people important information.

It can be written on. It can have a letter written on it, or a reminder, or a note to a family member.

A piece of paper can be cut. It can turn into a beautiful snowflake, or a heart or anything you could think of.

A piece of paper can also be  folded. It can turn into a frog or a crane or a paper airplane. It can become a small box to put other things in. It’s awesome.

A piece of paper can be drawn on. That’s my favorite! It can be sketched on, painted with watercolors or acrylics, or drawn on with pencil, pen, crayon, markers, anything! It’s amazing!

Paper is so awesome! And cheap! I mean, come on, I feel like something that has so much potential should cost a little more. But it doesn’t. So go buy some paper and create something, guys, because its so much fun!

Old-Fashioned

I have come to the realization that I am old-fashioned. No, wait, that’s not right. I’ve always known that I was old-fashioned, I’ve just recently compiled a list of evidence proving the point. So here goes. 

1. I like to write letters. Writing letters, to me, shows that you really care about someone. Shooting emails or messages on Facebook is nice and all, but writing letters takes time. You have to put pen to paper, then buy envelopes and seal them up, address it, and put a stamp on it. Then you have to wait a really looooooong time for the letter to get to the person, and then another really looooooong time for them to write you back. Bleh. But then they have something to keep. Something to pull out when they feel down, and read, and fold and refold until the lines are creased. The handwriting itself shows things that typing doesn’t. You can tell where they got excited and maybe missed a word or spelled something wrong. You can see where they smudged the ink. Maybe they left a doodle next to their signature. Letters are just cool.

2. I prefer real books to ebooks. I mean, I can see the appeal in being able to carry around an entire library in your purse, but I feel like part of the excitement of books is when you can show someone your bookshelf. Like, hey, look, I have this many books! And they are all different shapes and sizes and have different paper and fonts. Some of them smell old, or new. The pages may be glossy or rough. Personally, I love to see where the page numbers are on the page. If they are at the top, or the side, or the bottom inside corner. It’s fascinating! Anyway, I could go on and on about books for weeks and still not tell you everything I love about them. When I get a new book, the first thing I do is smell it. And with an ebook, you can never tell how well loved the book is. One of my favorite things to do is to go into used book stores and search out the most battered books I can find. The ones with dog-eared pages and cracked spines. The ones that have tear stains in the sad parts. Someone wanted to immerse themselves in this story so many times that the book is tired. It’s beautiful! 

3. When I write my stories, I tend to do it in a spiral bound notebook with a pen. I feel like that way I can’t get ahead of myself and jump to other parts. I mean, when I do get to the point where I need to brain dump, I will do it on my computer. But I prefer to write. That way I can cross things out. I get to see the pages get brittle with ink. My fingers get stained. Writers cramp is bad, but I would rather have writers cramp than typers cramp. I can write sideways, upside down, or backwards. It’s great! 

4. Research. I don’t think anyone else my age has this problem, but I hate looking for internet sources when writing a paper. There’s just too much stuff to sort through! I would rather go to the library, where its quiet, and look through giant musty books that haven’t been checked out since before I was born. They just have so much information! And in books, there are usually entire books devoted to one subject, rather than having to filter through the entire web to find bits and scraps of facts. I’ll research in books any day. 

5. I love to do stuff with my hands. I love to crochet, and I like trying to knit (even though I can’t, at all). My roommates call me grandma, because of it. It’s ok, I find it funny. I love to cook, too, which isn’t really old-fashioned, but when bundled with the rest of the stuff on this list, it just adds to it.  

So, yep. I’m an old-fashioned eighteen year old. Oh, well. I love it! 

Creative Insanity

I am considered by myself and by many others to be a very creative person. I enjoy using my imagination, and ideas and thoughts of a creative nature occur to me naturally.

However, this is both a blessing and a curse.

It’s a blessing because I never have problems decorating school projects, quick catch-phrases pretty much attack me, and you can give me any type of material and in about five to fifteen minutes I either have created or am well on my way to creating a masterpiece.

It’s a curse because sometimes, my brain will not SHUT UP.

I’m not just talking about the occasional thing that pops into your head and you write it down, meaning to come back to it later. I’m talking about something that attacks your brain and takes it hostage, not letting it go until whatever story it has is out on paper, the drawing is sketched, or the music is found. And most of the time it’s not just one thing, it’s like, five. On the bad days it can be fifteen or twenty ideas clamoring around in my skull, demanding my immediate attention.

Last night was one such night. My brain finally shut itself down at two in the morning, and I gladly fell asleep.

And before you ask, no. I do not have ADD.

It can get very frustrating. When I’m at school, and that time limit is coming up in twenty minutes, and I need something on my paper, but my brain wants to develop that one character some more. When I need to focus on my homework, but my mind is literally wandering. My notebooks at school have random pages devoted to doodles and poems and stories, many of which I never even finish.

I’ve had this creativity disease for as long as I can remember. Until about the age of nine, it was virtually impossible for me to think in terms of first person. My stream of consciousness read like a book until I finally reined it in over a period of about half a year (That was a very tiresome period. It’s hard to convert from ‘she’ to ‘I’).  When I was younger, I would spend hours at night in my bed concocting stories for my stuffed animals. They would go on elaborate adventures, and they all had back stories and personalities. I would play until I fell asleep.

I also read like a maniac. Still do, in fact. I cannot get enough of stories, and will pretty much read anything you put in front of me. I read the last Harry Potter book in less than thirty six hours. The last Eragon book in less than two days (And how very disappointing it was, too.). I had a 12.9 reading level by third grade. My vocabulary is bigger than even I think it is, which is proven to me every time I write an essay.

And, well, it’s all well and good until someone goes insane. People joke about the voices? Yeah, they’re real. And sometimes they sound suspiciously like my sister, but never mind that.

Because, the problem with being so brilliantly creative is that you open yourself up to see the world through a different lens than most other people. With this comes the added problem of being more susceptible to emotion. Everyones tragedy is your own. So is their happiness.

You see it all throughout history. Musicians and painters and artists who go certifiably insane. I can certainly see why. It’s an awful lot of stuff to handle and sort through.

But that’s where the beauty of being so imaginative comes in handy. When things get a little rough, you shove it all away and go to your ‘happy place’. And before you ask, no. I’m not sharing!

So that’s what my brain looks like on a regular basis. It’s messy, it’s disorganized, and it’s insanely creative. But no, I don’t want any medication to ‘fix it’. There’s nothing wrong with it. My brain is exactly the way God made it to be, and while sometimes I don’t always like His choices (mostly at three am, because come on God, I have school tomorrow.), I couldn’t imagine being any other way. And if I can’t then you won’t be able to either, so don’t even try!