I’m going to study in Costa Rica with my university
And my Medium platform caught the director’s attention
In January of 2015, I made a resolution to myself. I wanted to spend 2015 healing with words. I spent a year trying to understand myself and what I wanted. When 2016 rolled around, I had found my footing. The words were flowing out of my mouth like water from a well at my feet. I deconstructed the idea that my masculinity preceded my emotions and finally felt at home in my own skin. For the first time in my life, I felt purpose.
Poetry has since then become a release. It is healing, it is powerful. It is my soul bleeding in written form. 2016 was a year of understanding who I am, where I come from, and where I am going. It was a year of poetic growth. And you, thank you for reading my work. Every response, every mention, every green heart makes my heart flip. 2016 was a year of love, despite the hate that swept us up.
A year changes you. Or rather, the time within a year teaches you. Time breaks you down and builds you up, collects your pieces and thrashes them against the wall. There is pain and ache. But this makes you strong. Your words, they become thick and laced with history. Your heart beats slower, but not because you are tired – rather, you now know life moves fast, and you must value each heartbeat you are blessed with.
To write is to know this: our words preserve what is human in an unbreakable time. I write to let others know they are not alone. I want my words to cradle your memories. You needn’t feel alone anymore. I understand you, and you, me. This is what it means to be a writer.
To think my passion has offered me notoriety is humbling. I write to help others, to love myself better. And in doing what I must do to survive, my future is building up around me.
This May, I will be taking you along to Costa Rica with me. These words of mine will be your passport. I want to make you feel alive alongside me. All of this? It is because of you, simply reading what I write. You may not think that a response or like offers too much, but because of the attention you choose to gift me, my life is opening up in a marvelous bloom. Because of you. That is wild, irrevocably and wondrously wild.
Thank you again. I will never be able to say it enough. I am so thankful to write to people who want to read. May nothing but love and peace find you in this new year.
-Braden
(Note: all photos were taken on a previous trip to Costa Rica by myself or peers.)
