I do not know who I am as a writer but it is the thing I was created to do. I do not know what I want to write because my head was stuck in the clouds for my first twenty-two years so I naturally wanted to write about girls with swords, castles and kingdoms, and morally righteous knights. I do know I have grown — maybe not up, though I am not entirely sure in the ways I have — and I am waking up to adult life so I want to write about the inner workings of people, relationships in all their love and tragedy and warmth and peace and feeling and permanence and impermanence and mortality, and life. But I do not know how I will do this because I have not lived. I do not know how to write now because I do not know what I am, but what I do know I am is new. I do not know myself, so what I am really supposed to write about anyways?
I do not know who I am as a person because I know I need to change and oh God does he know I try but trying is not enough when you need the metamorphosis like I need . I do know that I cannot be that thing — that empty shell pumped full of aimless, useless, constant aggression, lies that dripped off my tongue like sweet nothings, and the shared weed joints and desperate baccy ends that are a mixture of fond memories and the cause of my brain dormancy — anymore because what I am harming is my heart and therefore I am hurting everyone but myself. I do know I am conceited and a girlfriend and a compulsive liar because that is what he says and what he thinks, does and breathes is all that matters to me. I do not trust the perception of myself because I do not recognise I have one, even when staring into a mirror, into the midnight behind the windowpane in front of me as I write this, so I take what he tells me as fact because I do not know.
I do not know who I am as a lover because I love with my everything until someone double taps they cannot breathe, or say this is not, I am not. I do know that the poets were right – despite never being intimate with their words – because if there is anyone in this forsaken world that knows the threads of love and fate, then surely it has got to be them? I do know I am scared I am wrong because if a group of writers who were named after an era of romance and devotion do not know what love is, then who does? I do know I may be more scared of them being right: perhaps no one has loved correctly since they put pen to paper and bent ink to the will of their ways. I do not know. I do not know. I do not know.
I do not know what I am becoming, who I will become because I do not know what I want, but I am searching, I promise I am trying. I want to be different and calmer and the kindness I want to see in this world but I know I am failing. I want to not feel the heavy melancholy deep in my chest when I breathe, I want to achieve and I want to write and I want to love. But I am not sure if I know how to do those things anymore, or if I even did in the first place. Most of all, I do not want to hurt you. I do not know what I want to be but all I know is this wanting, this desire to be something else, something more that the only thing I am feeling is e m p t y.
I do not know who I am. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I am. I do not know who I am. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I am.
I do not know.
Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?
WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I? WHO AM I?
WHO!