I Don’t Know Yet

I used to write a lot. When I wasn’t writing, I was reading; words were my sanctuary. Language was how I felt most human. I read to children almost daily and myself almost hourly. I read everything from fantasy to the dictionary. I laughed so hard I would fall off couches and only stopped when I was crying so hard I couldn’t see anymore.

I don’t remember the last book I have read and this is the first I’ve written a full sentence in an even longer time. I do art now: visual art. I don’t know if I’m any good and I don’t really know what any good means. I had spent most of my life assuming the only art I would ever be involved in is language arts.

I have found a new language in this new art. I am not fluent and I long for the familiarity of a written, phonetic language and the ease I found communicating with it. I felt confident entering conversations I had nothing to do with and still being a productive contributor. I had no limits in my beautiful little world of words.

I look back on the words I wrote here, many of which express severe pining for a boy who now finally loves me back. Many others are lightly masked notes of intense fear of vulnerability that are clearly visible to me now.

With art I’ve laughed and cried and struggled more than I could have known. In an epic battle with myself to effectively communicate in this new language, barriers have been broken down that I had never before considered weren’t permanent structures. I don’t know what I’m doing on a technical level so I’m forced to rely on the little I know based on only my life experience. I can find the words to express almost anything, except perhaps my own deepest and yet unformed emotions; with art I am driven by those internal forces until they are clearly made manifest.

I don’t know which language is more effective and I don’t know which art I have more potential with. Probably neither fully fits either description. I have drawings that have finished unwritten thoughts and words that have expressed what my brush has tried only in vain to say. But maybe limits in my ability and understanding with one are what are finally breaking down the limits my aversion to full vulnerability the other. Maybe the art behind language is that what we’re communicating is really nothing more than what we know about ourselves.