Words Deep In…

Published in Broadside_Print Issue 5 August 2017 #NarrativeFeminism

Dear words that are deep in,

We have spent so much time together just us feeling the stories we created or witnessed or imagined. I know that we argue over sharing the stories through the written word when it’s so easy to TELL the story and the satisfaction that comes with verbally releasing it to the world is so much more immediate and DESIRABLE!

And shit… words that live deep within me… I get that you don’t want to leave. I don’t want you to leave either. What will replace you? But, honestly, y’all are too much now. I can’t hold you for much longer. I need space for my new stories. For the ones that are still shaping me, damn it. But I’m terrified to deal with the reality of me once you all are gone and on paper.

I am overwhelmed with what it is going to bring up but I am numb with you inside and I need to feel this beauty that life has offered me. I need y’all to get up on out and then I can get to all that drives me. We can do this life so much better with y’all outside of me and not taking over in here.

I have never liked sharing myself with another living being… Two pregnancies were wonderful but, by the end of both, I was ready for them and me to be separate, autonomous beings. So I need to birth or purge you, words deep within, so that I can be free. I need to stand separate from you. And when we are apart, when you live on a page rather than in my gut and my brain and my blood, we will see what we are left with…

What we may be left with is what is scary because we have always been together. We made each other for all these years.  So together we must just fucking do this. We must come apart. And then we will see what we are made of when there is only freedom left behind.