Part 2: Going back
Note: this is a continuation of post #1. If you want to read it from the beginning (which I recommend!), go back to “The Beginning”, posted on September 19.
Allow me to go back in time for a moment. Before 2020, before I was an adult, before any of the things I just talked about happened. Back to the 90s.
As a kid, I was always drawn to “creative things”. I was lucky to go to a small elementary school that, at least for me, seemed to foster this creativity. In school plays, I was told I had a gift for making people laugh, for comedic timing. In class, I was encouraged to write creatively. One of my earliest specific memories of this reinforcement was actually from a substitute teacher, one who I only remember very, very vaguely. It was fourth grade, and this teacher, after reading a story I had written, praised my use of “dialogue”. In my memory, she told me I should be a writer, although I can’t validate if that was true or just my interpretation. Either way, I can’t help but reiterate the importance of encouraging and praising children. They hold onto it, even decades later.
So my two creative loves as a child were writing and theater- I did love being on the stage, but I’ve never been someone who has thrived with competition. I didn’t really like competitive sports, I didn’t like auditions, I didn’t like the nature of always feeling like you were up against someone else. I was never a “theater kid”, I always felt kind of like in my own lane, doing my own thing, even though theater was certainly a big part of me becoming who I was.
Writing, though, was altogether different. It never felt like I was competing. It was so personal, so unique, so limitless, that I never remember having anxiety around it. On the contrary, when you find another person who is a writer, it almost feels like an imperative to encourage them, to both want to write together. At least this is how it felt for me.
Throughout my childhood, teenage and early adult years, creative writing was always something that I would circle back to. I would take writing workshops occasionally in and out of school, not making it my entire personality, but, a facet of it. In senior year of high school, we were doing a poetry unit in English class and I felt hooked on the high of poetic writing. I remember sitting in Economics class writing poems in the margins of my notebook. Truly, a sign you love something is when you find yourself doing it when you are supposed to be doing something else.
Throughout college and my early twenties, I continued to take poetry workshops and classes occasionally, but mostly, just found myself writing alone whenever I wanted to process something. My “journaling” came in the form of short creative essays and poems. I had it in my head that one of my life goals was to write books, to become an author, but I had absolutely no idea how to do that. Other than, I suppose, to get more education. Get somebody else to tell me how to do what I wanted to do.
So, after two years of working after college in a 2009-2010 economy (with a sociology degree), I decided I needed to go to graduate school. I’m not sure exactly how these decisions were made, but I ended up applying to two very different programs. I applied to a few Creative Writing MFA graduate programs and one Medical Anthropology program in London (Medical Anthropology is kind of like public health +sociology/anthropology combined). Quick backstory: my uncle was a professor in the Medical Anthropology program and after one conversation about what I liked about my sociology classes he told me I would love this program and also, London. Twenty three year-old me was sold. Sure, lower tuition, an interesting curriculum and London? Yes, please. I figured, I would apply to all of these programs and make a decision based on where I got in…and, I only got into the London program. So, I decided, based on the fact that a few writing programs had not accepted me, that maybe writing would not be my career, as one so unfortunately does when they don’t receive a stamp of approval from the higher powers that be.
And so, I spent the year in London and it was…amazing. School was interesting and I really did learn a lot- about the world, about anthropology and how culture affects how we think about health and illness and medicine and well-being. I met some of my closest friends in the world that year, and met so many people who opened my eyes up to different things. I refer to that year as the “coffee talk” year because I honestly spent so much time sitting in cute coffee shops around London talking with friends. I lived in an adorable neighborhood called Belsize Park that was about a thirty minute walk to school (a walk through Regents Park which is a stunning city park in London) and because I had so much time that year, I walked everywhere. I drank beers in flowery gardens of pubs, I took train rides all around England and trips around Europe with visiting friends. I was exposed to a million new things. Mostly, though, as one would expect when traveling outside of their comfort zone, I learned about myself.
One thing I do remember about this time is that school work, while as I said, did interest me, it always felt like school work. Like, okay, I have to do this and sure, it’s interesting, I’ll learn a few things, participate in an interesting discussion, better myself. But, it felt like a version of me that wasn’t exactly my authentic self. When I wanted to fully relax into myself, I would sit at a coffee shop and lose myself in what my husband now has told me is called “flow”. I would still, write.
And that takes me to after London, in my twenties, when I continued the journey to get to now.
Note: I am writing these like little mini essay chapters that can all be read together as a story…Next chapter coming in two weeks!