Why is Rye

Holden Caulfield wanted to be a catcher in the rye. He had been asked to name one thing he liked. He could only think of an acquaintance of his at prep school, who had been bullied and jumped to his death from an upper story window. Holden thought, in the moment he was asked what he liked, of a boy who hadn't even known him, had just been a face he remembered because of how hard he hit the ground.

I write. In the same way Holden wanted to catch the children in the rye, I want to catch every word I can ever hope to dream. I write ravenously, opening the Notes app on my iPhone, an insomniac starved of deep sleep, who is finally released into midnight. I write out poems that make little to no sense to anyone else but myself. Like Holden's incessant rambling about phonies, I'm sure people read my poems and think, god, get some help already.

I was once called by my ex-boyfriend, "the most uninteresting person he knew." I was boring, a depressed, mousy girl with no future laid before me, no red carpet leading to any award ceremony. I started writing in a journal, little notes to myself, to remind myself I was still a person. It's hard, being one. I could have drawn a noose, but I flew to the west coast instead. I started a new life during quarantine, joined a writing website, and earned wings from merely existing. Finally, I wasn't somebody's ghost, I was only myself, and for the first time, that was enough.

I write raw. I wake up in the morning and only strive to make myself known. I write as if each word could make me better, whole, not sick. It doesn't, because it doesn't work that way, but it gives me a purpose I had never known I could acquire.

During quarantine, I wrote about only having a bottle of champagne from the "before times" in my fridge, depressed and angry at having nobody. But now, I can say that life has significantly improved for me, mostly due to writing, partially because I am catching myself from falling every day - catching myself in the raw, like rye, but more healed.