So here I am, in the most familiar space, facing a blank page once again. 

This place is my home, yet I always struggle here. Here is where the words have no form yet, no shape. Here is where ambiguity floats like mist over a stream, where I can see all the things the words may become and yet all the things they may fail to be, too. 

But it is in this space that I have learned to respect the words, perhaps even become friends with them. I have learned to shape them, to make them into a story whose real meaning is between the lines. 

I have learned there is nothing they can’t do—no picture they can’t paint, no hole they can’t patch. There’s no delirious happiness they can’t preserve, no brokenness they can’t give meaning to, no story they have failed to tell if the storyteller was determined enough. 

As a storyteller, I have given the words purpose, and in return, they have given me life. They have been beside me all along, at every turn like my companions, so I could never dream to be alone or helpless. I have grown up with the words, and the words have grown up with me.

There weren’t always so many of them. That’s never stopped me from tossing them in a wide radius around me, a circle of fierce protection and loyal comfort, but there was a time when new words were harder to find. 

Sometimes they still hide in the shadows. Sometimes I still have to fight to draw them out, like children hiding behind their mothers’ skirts. I have to coax and cajole before the words begin to peek out, shyly testing the waters. But once a few have revealed themselves, the rest begin to flood out. My hands flitter rapidly, desperate for each word to find its place in the final picture.

The past few days, the words and I have been engaged in a sort of flirtatious dance. I have scattered them across the page during sacrosanct moments and then allowed them to evade me for periods of time. 

But here I am, in the most familiar space—no longer facing a blank page but rather tying the loose strings and painting on the final details. 

Yet it’s a little different now. Different because the whole world is different—my atmosphere has changed. Different because these words are a sort of goodbye. A temporary goodbye, a goodbye to right now and hello to whatever comes next, but a goodbye nonetheless. 

And goodbyes can be so difficult, but this one comes with less of the pain. I’ve been preparing for this one for a while. I’m ready for whatever’s next, even if the prospect of the unknown sparks a bit of fear in me. I’m ready because the words have never left my side, and I know they won’t now.

The words are building a path to growth, to acceptance, to change. They are allowing me to be okay with who I am, even if that image isn’t clearly defined quite yet. They’re giving me the okay to live my life unhindered, the okay to let some things fall through my fingers.

The words are entangling themselves with the very essence of me. 

So, until next time, I can be confident in the presence of those words.