I feel like it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that everyone struggles to find their passion—and if it isn’t the passion that they’re searching for, it’s how they need to employ it into their life. This is sounding choppy. What I’m attempting to explain is that people flip back and forth between majors, people fall in and out of love with their interests, and there is not one person who hasn’t.

If you’re thinking “not me”, you’re probably lying to yourself or you may be experiencing amnesia. I digress. I never could decide what it was that I wanted to do forever until extremely recently, and I suppose there is no way of knowing if I will stick to my plan this time, but I like jumping to conclusions.

“I want a diary!” I remember begging my mother for my first diary in that Target aisle. My mother explained to me how I was too young to need a diary. But, children suck, I probably threw a tantrum or whatever rotten things I did to convince my mom to do what I wanted. Anyway, I somehow coaxed my poor mother into buying me my first of many journals that day. And she was right, I was too young to need a diary. This journal was colored on and in with crayons, I wrote my name hundreds of times on the pages, I ripped that thing apart—but I loved it. My mother knew I loved it, from then on I ended up with a new journal every time I had filled the first one, sometimes even before that. Eventually, I probably got sick of drawing stick figures fighting and my diaries turned into long stories and I attempted to understand why I felt the way I did and why people did the things they did in these stories.

The earliest journal I kept is from middle school (it’s way too “juicy” not to) and in this diary, I talked all about the boys I liked and the girls that were mean to me and how I felt left out of everything. I’m not saying this for pity, I’m pretty sure that was middle school for literally everyone. While I’m explaining myself, I feel that it’s important to add that my mother never looked at my diaries, she never asked me to read her anything, she never tried to improve my grammar, she just let me write. Without that, I might not use as many commas as I do and I might not go off on tangents like this, but these thoughtless quirks are now so important to my craft. When my mother died, all I could do was write about it. I bought a new diary. I felt like nobody would really understand where it was that I was at. I remember feeling so alone, until a few months later when I found my mother’s journal.

Every milestone in my life has a journal, they might not all be full but I think it’s important to recognize that they aren’t all full because not everything I had to say belonged there anymore. Just like we all move on, my journals move with me through time. I could never refill the journal from my first real relationship, I could never write in footnotes to my grieving process. Nothing has ever healed me like words, and I’ve never been able to console myself in someone as deeply as I can with blank pages. At this point, I write not only for myself, but hopefully for others. I dream that one day the things I say will mean as much to people as the things that King and Frost say mean to me.

Ernest Hemingway said to just “sit down to your typewriter and bleed”. I have no choice but to bleed, I have no choice but to write. I cannot sit silently and let my thoughts fill my head, they need an exit wound. I don’t know if this is how everyone feels or if it’s a writer’s thing. Come to think of it, I feel that if something was truly a passion to someone, it would be a deeper part of them than just a hobby. Everyone’s passion should be a gateway for some kind of emptying, or at least a source of honesty. Somebody (I have no idea who) once said that “you must be willing to suffer for your art”. I guess that sounds harsh, but I suffer every time I reread the morose words from years ago, I suffer every time I attempt to rehash the bad days and the good ones; I am willing to take every unwanted experience I have encountered and use it for my art.

I began this piece with the intention of helping somebody understand what it means to be passionate. I apologize if your eyes just bobbed back and forth between the margins, I’m not for everyone. But I hope that if you attempted to take the chance to understand where I was coming from, I made some sort of personal connection to you. It’s a mind-game, really. It would mean a great deal to me if you let your personal thoughts fill you for a while after reading this, whether or not those thoughts are good towards me or my writing, it’s not exactly relevant. Put yourself in a spot where you can be honest about your passion (or lack thereof) and try to connect the pieces.

P.S.
Writing helps me, it might be worth a try.