Still Searching for the Center
and get lost everyday
Dear Diary,
Whenever I start writing again, my head fills with thoughts and feelings, all trying to get out as fast as they can. But the irony is that I always feel lighter the moment I put myself in the path of expressing them. It’s like I become a factory, producing and exporting at the same time. I think writing might be one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.
Let me tell you a secret. I have a very general belief that the most wonderful thing a person can be is interesting. So, in one way or another, I’ve built my whole life around trying to become someone like that. Not cool, exactly. Being interesting is different. It’s a strange combination of curiosity, honesty, intelligence, humor, sensitivity; everything at once. And what makes someone fascinating changes from one person to another.
Still, I’ve only met one or two people who truly had that quality, and I fell in love with them almost immediately. I could look at them and think, They’re smart. They know so much. They have countless talents. And somehow they’re also acceptably mentally healthy. Even now, I can’t quite explain what made them so captivating. It’s like Fleabag; I can’t define it, but I recognize it the moment I see it.
Maybe that’s the person I’ve always wanted to become. Partly because I admire people like that, and partly because some part of me believes that if I become someone worth being fascinated by, then the person I fall in love with might, hopefully, love me back.
When I was little, I used to lie on the freshly washed floor of our little garage for hours, breathing in the smell of wet dust and thinking of nothing but that smell. My mom would get worried and find me asleep there on the floor. That memory is still so vivid, and so rare, that I’ve spent years trying to find that feeling again whenever I get the chance. Or I used to turn off my phone for days, reading books and doing the ordinary things people used to do before cell phones existed. I miss those moments. Sometimes I even wonder if my best day has already come and gone.
Anyway, every now and then I light a candle, sit in the dark, write on my laptop, and imagine I’m using an old typewriter. I try to clear the fog from my sight just enough to see where I stand in life. Who am I? And what do I like to do? I probably can’t answer the first question, but maybe I can spend my life answering the second.
The first question won’t leave me alone, though. I keep wondering: what made me feel like I had to be a certain way to be interesting? What made me this person? Or what does “this person” even mean? Am I defined by the things I express, or by the dreams that rise from somewhere unconscious? These questions, and millions of others, haunt me day and night. But somehow they also make me feel human. Because it wouldn’t be normal not to have them… right?
Every time I write, I’m building a maze while walking through it, trying to find the center. And still, I get lost in my own words. How did Homer write those astonishing stories and create all those unforgettable characters, while I can’t write a short piece without losing my way? Aren’t we both human?
Okay. I’ll stop with the questions.
For now, I’m slowly building a way out of this messy maze, this tangled coil, and walking back into the open. So that next time, I can return and try to create a new world all over again.
