Yesterday, I came back to my blog for the first time in several months. Since my last entries, I have visited very occasionally, but I never took the opportunity to actually write something new. Each time I visit, I look, startled and amazed, at all that I created two years ago. I think about how keeping this blog was a unique and special experience; I think about how much the experience meant to me as I moved through my senior year. I think about how this blog gave me a vehicle to write for myself, to find my voice not as a student but as a person, a writer. And I think, with a touch of sadness, about how I rarely take the time to write for myself anymore, about how I miss it.
I think about how I miss it. But I never actually do it; I never actually open a notebook and begin.
But god, I miss it. I miss the feeling of words constantly lining up in my head, ideas anxiously awaiting their chance to be articulated. I miss the ease with which they flowed from my fingers, whether it was through a pencil or the click-clack of a keyboard. I miss how natural writing these entries felt, how once I started, even when I was unsure of where I would end up, my thoughts would take me to somewhere ultimately new and exciting. I miss the feeling of pressing "publish" on an entry that had particularly helped me articulate something new, the feeling of knowing that my words were floating in cyberspace to speak to anybody who was willing to listen. I even miss the feeling of uncertainty that anybody would read it at all, but perhaps this is because I also miss the feeling of not really caring one way or another. I didn't care because I knew that I was ultimately writing for me.
How can two years have gone by since I truly put forth effort to write in this blog? How can time slip through my fingers so quickly without me realizing it is happening? How can I spend two years thinking about how I much I miss the feeling of writing for myself and never actually do it? I look through my entries and I recognize the voice that wrote them. I remember being that voice. But how can I be that same girl after two years have passed, after I have started so many new chapters in my life that I can scarcely even count them?
I feel as though I have missed a valuable opportunity to do the very thing that I found myself obsessing over while I was writing in this blog: preservation. The months that I have spent not writing have swept in a wave of changes through my life. Had I written consistently throughout those months, I might have crystallized the precious and fragile process of becoming the person that sits here typing this entry.
I'm sure this isn't a loss that the world at large will feel, but I still feel it within myself all the same. But even more than that, it makes my heart heavy to think about how many times I wished I could feel the rush of words through my fingertips once more, and how many times I neglected to seize the opportunity to make that happen.
I suppose I cannot say that I have gone the last two years without writing for myself at all. In addition to making me see the world through a different lens and making me more comfortable with spontaneous discourse, this blog made me realize something else. It made me realize that there was always, always, at least one person I could count on to read my entries. And, in a way, it sort of nudged me toward, or perhaps planted the seeds for the realization that my gratitude and love for his consideration and loyalty was transforming into love for him. It's almost as though writing has become symbolic of our relationship, because a blogging kinship eventually turned into a letter containing three words nobody has ever said to me before, which in turn eventually became an entire summer of writing letters to bridge the gap created by geography.
I am realizing now that my writing found a way to exist even when I was not writing in this blog. My love letters to writing became my love letters to John. This relationship has facilitated my act of writing even in the absence of blogging, and for that, I am so grateful. Two years have not slipped through my fingers in the way my presence on this blog might suggest, and this is because a great deal of this has been spent building something as awesome and important as the person with whom I am building it.
I want to be better. I don't want to lose sight of the things that I love in the clutches of laziness or business or forgetfulness. I want to do things that make me feel real, like this blog once did. The biggest difference between two years ago and now, however, is that I have so many more things that help me do this. I have a boy that I love, a college that teaches me new things every day, and a swim team that makes me feel like I am part of something much bigger than just myself. I cannot speak for certain about the future of this blog, but I can say I hope I never find myself settling for anything less than feeling real and alive and important, anything less than doing (actually doing) the things that I love.
And god, do I love writing.
