ShadowSelf

Oh, you’re a writer? Is it all you’ve ever wanted?

One of the main and most immediate questions I get when I say I’m an author is ‘have you always wanted to write?’ And I have. I have always wanted to write and I have always written. But I did not always allow writing to be the good, healthy, gentle and giving thing it is in my life now. Writing is a beautiful thing, it makes me happy, it makes me proud to be me, it makes me feel connected to the world and people and myself. It took time to get here though.

When the lovely

Poe's Tell-Tale Heart

suggested skewed memories for this week’s theme, plenty came to mind. People and places I remember as bigger, as more. People and places I remember as smaller, as less. Memories better or worse but wrong regardless. When I sat down to write the poem however, it was writing itself that wanted my words. I realised that my memories of writing as a figure, a pillar in my life are skewed.

I did not always use writing to connect, I used it to hide. It did not always make me feel like myself, it helped me change myself, craft and create a person to be. My sense of self has always been slippery, silky, sneaky. On desperate days, as a teenager, I would just choose a character I liked and try to be them. My journal entries would start with the words '“Today I am:…”. The answer was never me. I was never the answer.

I have a tighter grip on myself now, I have both taken control and let go and somehow found a balance that allows me to just exist. Writing helped. I stopped writing despairing journal entries and depressing poems to make my suffering seem beautiful and worth it. For too long I used writing as a weapon against myself, now I use it as a balm. I write honestly and therefore not always cheerily, but I fill my books with hope, always hope. Poems can be a release without being graphic. Words don’t need to be sharp and ideas don’t need to be bloody.

For this week’s poem I wrote about that slippery self, teenage me. It is not the cheeriest, but I finally allowed her to be honest and that feels worth it to me. She feels worth it to me.

Anyway, here’s a poem.

ShadowSelf

Someone wants to see you
They follow close behind 

Smudge of charcoal on the 
Ground or  

A puddle on a table
A splotch on a page 

Drip and drain and 
As the day goes on the

Darker it gets and 
I like it 

Spilled ink 
I like it - how it 

Spreads just like
Veins across a page 

Builds a system 
Arteries connect

Find muscle and tendon
Skin and bone

A body of ink and paper
Lies at my feet

And I think 
I like this one 

Better 
This body 

And I think 
I should make it my own 

Meg

x