i don’t know how to write if it’s not purple,

A Confession Nobody Asked For

The person I am today may or may not make sense in the context of the life I have lived. Sometimes I look back at a past experience and see the shadow of myself in it. I say, “oh, this explains why I do the things that I do.”

In those moments I feel relief, because no matter how scary it can be, it’s much better to know that the broken parts of you are broken for a reason.

Other times, it’s not as straightforward. If I reach in I can feel certain scars that seem to have no origin. They just popped up, like those scratches on your thighs you find in the mornings. They may have come from night terrors, or an overbearing itch, but you can never really be sure. You weren’t there when it happened.

And so, altogether, I am a being of both the explained and the unexplained. These two parts of me collide daily, and it has reached a point where I find it hard to see the line. Maybe it’s true what they say about me; that I am a Gemini, and therefore I am two people.

Or maybe this is just the complexity of man. Maybe this is just the card we have been dealt.

I grew up with a woman who studied english, and because I love her, loving the language was the easiest thing I ever had to do. It came passively, like a waft of air to my lungs. I thought the stirring in my chest whenever I read a great line from a great book was just childish exuberance. And perhaps it still is, but every year I prod my scars and see the landscape of my inner self shift, and while everything changes this one thing stays the same.

I wrote the beginning of this when I was 20. I was a medical student who seemed to hate everything but books she had no time to read, stories she had no time to tell, and poetry she had no time to write. I started it and stopped, possibly because I had an Anatomy test I needed to study for, because somehow this had become my life.

I am 21 now. Things have happened. I have almost died and I have come back and though I am not yet wise enough to know what the world for me should look like, I am resolved to listen to myself enough so I know what it shouldn’t.

The draft on this said: “Last Edited: 7 months ago”.

I wish I could go back seven months and hug myself. And get her out of that place she was in, and that life she was in. She was always sad, and she only wrote short paragraphs about emptiness and pain. Anything more than a few paragraphs would squeeze her like a pressure cooker, and leave her panting like she had run a thousand miles. She was afraid of herself. Afraid of her own words, afraid of her own silence, and afraid of no one noticing she was in a hole.

There is something happening in my head that calms me, and sometimes the same thing triggers anxiety so bad I get rashes on my chest. I guess it depends on my situation. I guess it depends on the stakes. I guess it depends on whether or not I am happy. I am happy now.

The person I am today may or may not make sense in the context of the life I have lived. I have almost four years of medical training, and I’ve never been happier to throw it away. It isn’t a waste of time. There is no such thing as time for me. No such thing as money, no such thing as algorithms or audience percentages.

There is only happiness, and words so purple they make blood disappear. People used to tell me it wasn’t the end of the world, being in medical school. If I said I couldn’t write they would wave it away and tell me it will come back.

“You’ll find a way,” they used to say. “You’ll incorporate your writing into your work. You can make medical journals. You can author research papers. You can start a publishing company for medical literature!” Their dreams would be as big as possible, like they were trying hard to sell me this thing that I was too stubborn to buy.

There are no medical journals, or research papers, or publishing companies. There is no finding the perfect picture for my story so I can get three more retweets on twitter. There is no posting selfies at the right time on instagram, so you can click on my page and see the link to my medium.

There is only happiness, and words so purple they drink themselves into a stupor. I don’t know how to do anything else. And now I refuse to.