4:58 pm - Thursday, Mar. 06, 2003
Song: A Plain Morning - Dashboard Confessional
It�s an endless line of phases to pass through, and each one makes me question more what it is that I am doing. I haven�t writing skills enough for anything I want to do.
Over four days of bed rest, with nothing to do but think, and I couldn�t bring myself to that packet. I couldn�t fill out the papers and try to get in. I don�t care anymore.
I want to do the residence-writing program at Lewis and Clark this summer, but I almost refuse to try for it. I�m not a good enough writer. To go there with my words, with how I write and with how little confidence I have, it would get me nowhere. I�m supposed to be trying. I sat down here to try. Supposed to type it out, get the feel, and then pen it down on those forms that say nothing about how much I want this, and everything about how much I don�t deserve it.
Great authors are not named Megan, and they don�t come from Portland and they have skills that surpass the 1986 at the end of their birth date. They interest people, and they can write fiction, and they care about everything or nothing.
And I don�t mean that any writer is like this, I mean I�m supposed to be and I�m not.
�Tell the story of a time when words, whether written or spoken, sung or performed, have had power for you�
Somehow I think this might be the first case, and I�m not sure I can turn it into a story. Because it isn�t a story, it�s a telling.
Sometimes I think I use words selfishly. The only things I write independent from school are diary entries. Diary entries I post online in the hopes that someday someone will think I�m brilliant and slam a book deal on me and I�ll never have to do anything but waste words again. That would be a story.
As it is though, I�m left with nothing. I�m not a writer of letters to officials, I don�t write brilliant �zines that keep angsty teens from taking their lives another day. I try not to be political.
The only power my words have ever had is in keeping my own sanity, and sometimes relating just to what someone else feels. I put it all online, and they send me their comments. �I cried when I read that,� or �You tell just what I�m thinking�. I write and hope I feel something more than silly, I hope I sound philosophical and deep, and when I go back two weeks later, I wish I didn�t sound so sixteen.
I write to spell out for myself who I am, because I feel I�m supposed to know by now. And then I wonder why I said what I did, because I don�t want people to think of me like that.
The only thing the diary really does for me anymore is give me a chance to explain. I�m given the opportunity to spell out to my best friend, things about me. Because she always acts like she knows it all, and I�ve never felt so misunderstood by anyone person.
I hope that by putting myself out there, she�ll understand. That anyone will understand. But it doesn�t work that way. People hold onto their judgments, and the truth they just use to twist the lies. It�s a horrid little cycle, and in the end I just want to give up.
I try to convey myself in everything I write, and in the end I feel judged. I�m clearing myself of evils and insecurities as the words go down, but it seems in this world the no matter how many of those darker feelings about yourself you flush out, there are always more pouring in afterwards.
Words are about purifying, and the start of cycles. Maybe this isn�t a story, and not at all what I was supposed to write, but I�ve never been much good at that. The power words have given me is to be myself, in times, with people, and anywhere I felt I wasn�t right.
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