One Thing.

Last year, one of my friends asked me in a letter: “why do you write?” And out of all the questions which he asked — about my deepest fears and insecurities and whatnot — it was this question which struck the hardest. Growing up, I spilled words [in crooked handwriting, all loops and heart-bubbled ‘i’s] onto notebook pages because I did not want to be forgotten. Strangely, and in contradiction to all your preconceptions about elementary school — this was what motivated me during the primitive days of my writing. 

A little condition called early onset existential crisis. 

Imagine: fourth grade me, an expanse of life ahead, preoccupied by impending death and a great unknown afterwards. I would watch people speak beautiful, poetic things, and the words would drift from their lips, dissolving into the atmosphere. Nothing I said would linger in the air the way I wanted it to. It was because of this that, under the illusion that ink was permanent and would far succeed me in years, I picked up a pen. 

The question continues to push itself into my mind, long after my friend asked it. A year ago, this was my response: 

Escape. 

When I am in corners, I write about walls and bare feet. 

When I am lying, I write about love. 

When I am alive, I write about wide open skies. 

When I am healing, I write about canyons and stitches and bare forearms. 

When I am stuck, I write about rain and wildflowers. 

When I am sad, I write about champagne or window panes. 

Anything and everything, to continue moving forward. 

For the longest time, I was obsessed with growth. After struggling with mental illness (or, as I referred to it in my youth: the monsters in my brain), the thought of moving backwards was frightening. I would do anything to avoid it, to continue living happily and recklessly, making up for the years I felt I had lost. It was a long time before I realized that even more than making a mark on the world, escape had always been the motive. 

When I was young, I wanted assurance that some part of me would remain on the earth after my body. The plan was to escape the grand imminence of life and its end. When I was older, I scrawled my sickness across the pages — my notebooks were pleas, repeated a million times, for a relief from the pain. It was years later when a hesitant sort of healing settled in, accompanied by the increasingly vast insecurity that I would fall back into the scarier places of years before. 

And now? I suppose I write because I have something to say. The journals stacked against my shelves are raw. They are real. They are stained with tears and anger and joy intermingled. So here I am, existing in an increasingly filtered world, attempting something organic. 

I should let you know — it scares the absolute hell out of me. 

My mom used to have a magnet on the fridge that read: “Do one thing every day that scares you.” I think about it a lot, how daunting of a command it is. Yes, it’s just one thing. But every day? How am I supposed to slip past my comfort zone so regularly?

Well, here I am. And this is my one thing, today.

All the love,

Siena Maria