I often wondered why my favorite inspirations had the tendency to disappear. At the peak of their pain, their overcoming, their relatability, they would take their words or art or photos or music away with them only to come back with their successes already well written and their hearts well loved without that window to watch how it all came together. Wrongly entitled to their sufferings because I saw myself reflected in whatever medium of art they put out, I felt a loss at the lack of accessibility to their inner workings. Their posts and videos and captions and photos. I admired their angst, and wit, and heart, and pain, and creative expression of the honesties of growing up as hopeful romantics. In a time when I could not be vulnerable, I endured vicariously through them: 

Claire Marshall on YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/user/ohhaiclaire

Kim Vallido on YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/user/kimberleex333

Molly on Tumblr | mols.tumblr.com

Keen on Tumblr | acupofkeen.tumblr.com

Jeanne on Instagram |   https://www.instagram.com/thegreylayers/?hl=en

Jhené Aiko wherever she could be found

And then the same happened to me. Writing comes easy in heartache. Words provide endless company for loneliness, amusement to restlessness, and candor in self-righteousness. Navigating life’s uncertainty was made comfortable with my pen and journal in hand. Taking indulgent photos of myself and capturing the environment I chose to live in was my own self-study. I thought, perhaps if I learned myself more I could teach others how to know and love me better. 

I was obsessed with pursuing myself, my own desires, and showcasing my findings for the world as to say “Look. This is who I am and this is the only way I know how to be” as to ward off those would be incompatible and to welcome those who I might just happen to love. 

This wordpress is an example of that. My spilledinkseries.tumblr.com is a smaller window to it. My instagram pays complete homage to the formative ways a young woman declares herself to the world before anyone else can do it for her. Though seemingly juvenile, these expressions on social media are my personal favorite ways to remind myself that the teenage angst fueled by childlike invincibility will never die.

I stopped committing words to paper because I found my own person to hear these words said aloud. He hears these ramblings every day, unedited. He sees all angles, unfiltered. And though my words fell away from the world to consume, they dance happily between the spaces we share. And if this is what any semblance of my inspirations felt back then, then I understand.

I understand now why hiatuses exist. I understand how they sometimes become impasses. Life has become less about announcing myself to the world as it has become about basking in the revelations I’ve unearthed. Sometimes that articulates itself as art; the last two years it’s been living it. But at 24 I’m still full of stories and now I’m striving for both. Stories of what has happened, and stories yet to unfold.

Let’s try this together again.

Janelle.