The intuitive writing workshop discusses a mantra to begin. The room is filled with English majors. People hoping to publish a novel. Me? I’m just hoping to work through authenticity in my words. He speaks of inner peace, finding it in your spine. Something I would have aligned with in yoga class prior to the new now. Now? I can’t find that “inner peace”. I showed up in my best lululemon late for the chakra alignment. My spine is filled with turmoil. It’s twisted. A raging Tasmanian devil of emotions and mismanaged reactions. The knowledge that my reactions are inherently “wrong” I can feel it through my entire body. My nails vibrate. Should I be crying or elating? I’m not sure anymore. Maybe both at the same time? I’ve learned that anger IS an emotion. I’d never experienced it before, or perhaps never gave into it. I’ve never bothered to embrace the negative, instead I always explained it away as a secondary emotion.

“GOOD VIBES ONLY!” reads my $70 dollar tank top I bought at the fancy corporate studio in an attempt to be more “yoga” back when I first started practicing and felt like an outsider.

Of course it’s made of cotton. A useless athletic fabric.

Alcoholic sentimentalism and the rhythm of religion plays on the radio. True artists put it into words. To their music. To the art. To poetry. To whiskey. To sex. It’s dark. It’s dirty. It’s real. Always a proclivity but now becoming an obsession, I read from writers like Bukowski, Palahniuk, Vonnegut, Fitzgerald and Kerouac. The drunken tales of confusion and discontent decorate the corners of my mind. Perhaps we just give it all away to whiskey and chasing a fleeting feeling that will never solidify.

Because oh do I feel it. The never ending cacophony of emotions has become an every day struggle. I used to dull them. Tune them out. I can’t, in good faith, do that any longer.

It’s time to sit and converse with the feelings for a while.

I’ll write through it. I always have. I’m not a “writer” per se, but perhaps I am. The kind of writer who struggles with admitting to a struggle. A fake writer. Peppered in platitudes and pleasantries.

I am the kind of writer who deletes her words out of fear they look vulnerable upon second thought. The kind of writer who has good days and bad days and has yet to find a happy medium between the two.

Art comes from the bad days. Throughout my entire life I have been the most inspired when I have been the most broken. A firm believer that the best creatives and the artists are orchestrated via acceptance that life isn’t a plastic veneer. It’s hard. It’s beautiful. Humans can be both magic and malevolent. Life is a struggle. You can not truly appreciate the beauty without accepting the darkness.

I listened to work being shared this evening and only doodled across my notepad: “can one actually create without authenticity?” “your thesaurus isn’t your soul” “SHOW ME REAL, WHAT IS THIS SHIT?” “I need you to show me your human perception via your writing” “You can’t hide behind a text book”

Your life isn’t your graduate degree and fucking sun salutation.

Who am I to say what is and what isn’t right? I only know what feels right to me. On my good days I don’t feel the need to pound a keyboard, instead I publish witty Instagram stories. On my hard days, my only therapy is my keyboard.. I never publish, but perhaps I should.

Hi.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B5XNu4hgvcQ/