Sweet Fresh, but not exactly.

I started blogging a long time ago and I got fed up with the process for a few reasons, the most primary being that it's not public enough and not private enough at the same time. What I mean by that, is if you want people to read what you're writing you have to give them the link to your blog. The reason blogs exist is so people read them I think, and so you want people to. But then it makes you look arguably pretentious and presumptuous, to assume that everyone in your life is dying to read what you're doing. If you don't, chances are you would rather keep a journal, electronic or otherwise. So a blog is somewhere in between I guess, between a tabloid and a notebook. It can be as private or as public as you want it to be. But it's sort of trapped in a void. Another reason I don't like it is because it's so easy. I prefer words to flow from a pen like water and to coat a page in thoughts that spill from my body and my mind at the same time. I've been journaling forever and I just can't grasp the process of blogging. It's hard for me to do. But I'm starting over, simply because I love to write.

I write. That's what I do. Writing and I are synonymous. It's the one thing I DO that defines me (the other is my obsession with music, both good and bad, and its ability to heal or provoke or scare or sadden... music is my passion in life and it drives me to be the person I am). Writing defines me in that I never knew before that I was good at anything, really good at anything. And now I know that I am -- it's the only thing I can do right, apparently. I don't see anything in my own writing but other people do and in the end, although I don't write for my readers, I do indeed appreciate that they gain something from what I do. I'm not published and never really thought I would be,but that so many people I know (for the record, not just my mom and friends but teachers and people I met in my creative writing class, also writers themselves, most of them very very very good) appreciate the stories I write gives me hope that maybe I can be a published author someday.

Writing has opened up so many gates for me. It's introduced me to the kind of friendships that I thought only existed in movies and the kind of friendships that I never thought I was capable of having. The kind that is honest and unconditional no matter what. The kind where your friends tell you things to your face, they tell you what they think, they don't fear you and they trust you all the time. They're the kind of friends I think everyone should have. It's also taught me the meaning of the word "confidence". I never thought I had confidence but I've become a more confident person through my writing and through expressing myself. Once you've bared your soul to people in that way, you of course, become a more confident person. I've learned too, through my characters, who I am as a survivor of sexual abuse.

I'm someone who defines themselves by labels. First I was a baby, then I was a kid, then I was a loser, then I was a university student. But in university, probably the most in second year, I realized that in between "kid" and "loser", there's "survivor". And something about being a survivor was inside me for ten years at that point, and it just... never occured to me. I had pushed it down so far, I had almost sort of forgotten it. Well, not "forgotten" but... maybe, ignored. It's something I never knew affected me until I 'fell in love' with a boy and I realized that what keeps me away from men I fall in love with is my fear of men in general. And believe it or not, it took me a moment to think about why this is. I used to chalk my shyness up to the strong amount of teasing and harassment I got in school, but it occured to me that there are psychological effects of this thing I tried hard to ignore. And I have them. I did research and the results scared me. I learned I was a survivor. And if you've ever faced trauma, you know that eventually you need to come to terms with it. It takes time, but it can't be ignored forever. You act it out in some way -- some people choose rebellion, some people choose drugs and alcohol, some people choose professional therapy. I choose writing.

That's me in a nutshell. I'm kind of a damaged and depressive person and I have this innate need to express myself in a way that's so pointless but for me, so necessary. Welcome to my New York fruit stand.

xo