about the author

i say i'm a writer even though most of my works are limited to a stained leatherbound journal i haven't finished in five years. i don't say i'm an artist. i believe i'm a writer, because people have told me i'm a writer. i don't believe i'm an artist even though this is my art portfolio and i'm applying to art schools and two of my three majors are art. i don't say i'm a cook, but maybe that's changing as my roommate loves the food i cook. i never knew how to take a compliment and that's something i'm slowly learning. i tie my self worth deeply to other people's oftentimes static definitions of who i am, even though i took that love languages quiz and it said i was 0% words of affirmation. i have always been too much, and unfortunately it took me far too long to realize i was better that way. now one of my greatest fears is that i'll never be able to care, to love, as freely and fully as i used to. i have never experienced heartbreak, but i had loved, and i didn't know it was possible for both to coexist until this year. i changed a lot over the past few years. i don't really know who i am anymore. i'm trying to not find comfort in nostalgia, because memory is never real and nostalgia is rose-tinted. sometimes when i cry i start smiling for that reason, because saltwater stains flood me with familiar memories, and nothing about me is familiar anymore. i know what my morals are, and that's all that guides me. i am relearning to live life in a way that fills me with giddy serenity. i seek contentment, not happiness, and sometimes i'm a little arrogant because i think i'm wise beyond my years. i can never fully explain why, not in a way that doesn't feel like it left all my organs out on display, free for the taking. i'm arrogant and i love myself, but i'm only now learning how to like myself. i seek contentment, and i also seek family, and a clearer understanding of the self. i love myself but i'll never be good enough for myself, and i used to point an ugly, crooked finger at my past for that but in reality i've always been good enough for everyone but me. i don't know how to live in the present as an isolated moment, and i also don't know if it's possible to do that in a way that's informed by the past. i've been hurt a lot but i've hurt equally as much. i was young and innocent and i'm still learning to forgive myself for that. i don't know how i'll ever live up to the idea of me, so i close myself off if i think people start to view me too highly, if i think they pedestalize the idea of me half as much as i do myself. music makes me feel the most intense emotions i've ever felt, and music is the only thing that can truly comfort me like nothing else. sometimes i feel intense pain because i'm not fluent in it, the only language that could even come close to translating memories too sacred or sacrilegious to verbalize. i'm playing the guitar again. i'm singing again. i'm making art again. i'm learning new things like pottery and crochet and perspective drawing and being vulnerable. i'm microdosing on failure, and i will continue to do so until it loses its bitter taste in my mouth. i have a pen in hand always, and i will continue to do so until it feels familiar in my hand again. loud noises scare me, but one day that'll stop. i keep a list of gifts i think my friends will like on my phone and my favorite thing is coming up with excuses to give them. i still think the things i love are a waste of my time, but one day that'll stop too. that one is especially hard for me. i am fundamentally a creator; this is the only thing i know for sure about myself. i am trying to make sure my present and my future both align with this. i am okay, and that used to be rare. i know in the end i'm gonna be okay, and that's enough for me when i'm not. i rarely feel holistically understood, and i'm coming to terms with the fact understanding is a finite resource that stopped being produced back in 2018. i am analytical and empathetic, and one of those is a curse to no one but myself. perhaps the morals i guided my life by are changing too, and perhaps that's why i feel lost. my life is in flux, and i am the happiest i've been in a long time.