I’d rather be honest than impressive

I almost didn’t. I have been carrying a question around for a couple of weeks, and writing it down here feels like the moment it stops being mine alone.

The question started surfacing in the quiet space between the end of school and the start of summer. It is about who I am, and how I came into the world, and the gap between the outline of that story — which I have always known — and the actual texture of it. Stories have texture. Stories have other people in them. Stories have a “before”. I am realising I have never sat with my own “before” long enough to see what it looks like.

If I think the question and put my phone down, the question disappears. If I bring it up at lunch, my friends say something kind and we change the subject. So this is the deal I am making with myself: write the thing down here while it is still confusing, before I have tidied it into a neat story. Not because I have answers — I don’t have any yet — but because some questions deserve a place to live while you carry them around.

I have a long summer ahead. I think part of it is going to be about asking.

Let’s see how it goes.

— D.