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When someone writes truthfully, do you inevitably fall a little bit in love with them? 

I do. 

I do, because truth is a rare thing these days. To write it into existence - to have the impulse (or the audacity) to share - is both an art and a service in our quick-paced, fake news world. 

It’s Beauty with a capital B. It’s God speaking. 

I made a friend recently. This is a somewhat uncommon occurrence in my starkly independent, introvert-masking-as-an-extrovert, always-want-to-leave-the-party-early-unless-I-can-dance-alone-for-hours life. I make friends but I don’t really call them friends unless they hit me in that pointed way. Some people give you the pang and others float on by. This one hit me. He captivated me from day one. He’s a writer with ten published books and has a professed love for Jesus (and women). He’s a writer and he’s physically attractive (just ask the internet), which seems to matter a lot to him but less to me because I'm more curious about his mind. He’s a writer and a fellow lover of the water. He’s a writer and he’s a lover but he’s mostly a friend. 

Like I said, Friend captivated me from the first day. For the first two weeks, I grappled. Could I actually love him? I know him only in fractions by what he reveals. By the late night string of jokes he tells until my jaw hurts from smiling for too many hours, and by the books he slips into my bag before I leave in the morning. I’m no fool - I have loved and lost. I know the arc of this story.

Fleeting romance puts pressure on us. Hollywood tells us we fall in love on a carefully crafted timeline, but I know that the connections I value most require a prolonged patience and the acknowledgement that they might not be bound for romance. I once had a crush on a boy who I never kissed, and thank God for that. He’s my best friend in the world now and he’s saved my life in more ways than I can count. He’s watched me sob through grief next to a snowmelt stream in the Eastern Sierras and sat with me on a Caribbean cliffside as I asked the tender question “Will I ever be able to love again?” 

What would have come of that deep kinship had I kissed him by the Truckee River? Dissolve. Dissipation. 

Love, when pursued too hastily, suffocates. 

Not this time though, because I don’t care anymore about the sparks of love. 

I want the truth of it.

And the truth is I don’t mushy gushy love Friend, but I do love his aim to write through the mess of his life and seek God along the way. And upon deeper introspection, I note that my captivation is laced with envy. I want to be more like him, writing with great aplomb and exposing his veins. I want to be that brave. 

“If he can write ten books, I can write one,” I tell my sister the day after yet another 3am bender at his place. 

I can write one! Can I write one?

I have been writing words down in a journal since I was 8 years old. Sometimes I share snippets. My mom tells me I’m a writer. People tell me to write more. I write words but I hide them, too scared to say anything provocative. If I share my words, people will see me. They will know my story and my stains. They might even laugh at me, or worse, feel indifferent. Anonymity has been my best defense. 

But I am spilling over with things to say.

Today, during this late April snowstorm, I share my words because writing them out of me feels like a need, not a choice. I’ve always had too many questions. I write as an involuntary response to being part of this mystifying world. I write to cope. Writing makes me a messy human, all the while scouring me to shine.

These words need a life outside of me, outside of the pages of my journal, and outside the confines of my Notes app. They need to grow legs and walk around in the world without me, become their own being, take a few punches, live a little.

This story isn’t about falling in love (at least, I don't think it is). It’s not about men, although I will inevitably write about them because my relationships have formed much of me. 

I will write about my connections, 

I will write about my ponderings and wanderings,

I will write about my shortcomings, 

and I will write about my search for home and God. 

I will write myself into the story of the world with the hope that I, too, learn to take up space. 

So,

Thanks to Friend,

and the mirror he is unknowingly holding up to me,

Thanks to the boy I never kissed,

Thanks to God for being God, 

Thanks to Mom for being Mom, 

Thanks to the intolerable impatience I feel towards myself for not yet writing out,

and to my existential fear that I will be lying on my death bed

having never written anything of substance,

Thanks to Grandma(s),

Thanks to Grandpa,

Thanks to Roo,

Thanks to red-winged blackbirds,

Thanks to the dawn,

Thanks to the sea, 

Thanks to my cold cup of coffee,

Thanks to every love I’ve envied rather than loved, 

Thanks to the few I’ve honestly loved,

Thanks to all the women who write,

Thanks to truth for being impossible to run from,

Thanks to change,

And thanks to you 

for reading.

-H

---

"if it doesn't come bursting out of you

in spite of everything,

don't do it.

unless it comes unasked out of your

heart and your mind and your mouth

and your gut,

don't do it.

if you have to sit for hours

staring at your computer screen

or hunched over your

typewriter

searching for words,

don't do it.

if you're doing it for money or

fame,

don't do it.

if you're doing it because you want

women in your bed,

don't do it.

if you have to sit there and

rewrite it again and again,

don't do it.

if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,

don't do it.

if you're trying to write like somebody

else,

forget about it.

when it is truly time,

and if you have been chosen,

it will do it by

itself and it will keep on doing it

until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was."

- Charles Bukowski