The beginning

I feel like I can never possibly amount to all of the impossible feats I want to. Therefore, I must try and discover all that I can in the time that I have. Time is allotted from our beginnings. Theories about where we begin are disastrously numerous and theories about where we end are equally so. And yet time is all that we have, all that we can use to accomplish our feats of discovery, and all that I will ever admittedly compete against in this lifetime.

I begin the life of this book as a willful, half-hearted woman and you can propose theories about where it will end, where I will end.  You cannot theorize how to get your self out of bed in the morning. You have to think about making your bed. If you think about making your bed, then you can get up and make it and not want to lay back in something you made. And so I get up, and I don't always make my bed. It's kind of like when I clean my ears or blow my nose. You clean your ears and want to see enough of the yellow, sometimes if you're lucky the orange-y, dirt on your Q-tip. So you then touch the dirt and confirm it is wax by the spongy-without-being-porous texture. Then when confirmed it is wax, I notice the warmth that comes from even my earwax. And with my nose, you can see where this analogy is going. Or maybe not that you want to admit it.

By writing this honesty aloud, I am making my bed. It might be a very long time before I can be honest enough to lie comfortably back under the sheets.

And so I write to you. This notebook you gave me and this pen now write for you. Without knowing how to support a writer, you gave two gifts that are necessities to physically record but not necessities to write. It is because you worry for me in ways that I will not for myself. It is because you are things that I will not be myself. This is written in part pity, part self-indulgence, part wishful thinking and part truth. 

Those feats that I see have lined themselves up like the beautiful Rocky Mountains. They grow the closer as I step towards them. The cooler air stiffens its embrace around my skin, the lighter my limbs live attached to my heart, and the holier I am from cleansing my thoughts in their presence. By admitting their presence, I am more than made of my bullshit solid mass. I am translucent and my two selves overlap and just are there.