#shewrote

Of course, your own story will be different, and you might have several versions of it depending on the situation. But the plain fact is, there’s a story we tell ourselves, and if it’s not helpful. It makes us feel bad about ourselves.

On a very sunny day in January I walked in the shade and wrote about the clouds. The writing prompt is "Tell a story of gathering clouds", and I tried my best to be fictional.. Sunday Writers Club - Jan 28th 2024

I'm more familiar with the sun, and moon. I'm not so comfortable with the skies in between.

"But look at me!", the sky has been calling for years. There's much more to the sky than that, I know. When he fell in love, Ewan McGregor sang "Like I've never seen the sky before". I saw the moon for the first time the last time I fell in love, but not the sky beneath, only the "bright" moon. It wasn't love.

The time I really saw the sky and answered the non stop call was a couple of months ago, on a cloudy summer day, a very blue day, by the river. I saw the clouds gathering like giants coming back from ancient times. I felt as if they came just for me, among the crowds sitting by the river, to stage an intervention. I felt so small, but not as lonely as I usually am in crowded places. That day, in a very weird way, the clouds were hugging little me.

I have been praying and crying for clarity lately, probably because I never appreciated it until the clouds gathered. I'm used to the sun, and I only saw the moon when I longed for someone or something. But the clouds? Not my thing.

Whenever I'm asked: What pains you? What interests you? What makes your eyes glow with passion? What makes you cry? I never get to have one clear answer. But most of the time, I don't have an answer at all. For some reason I never wanted to admit how hard those questions are for me, so I just say what comes up. This is how I lived most of my years, dismissing the clouds. Un-seeing me. Demanding only the sun, all of the time, taking my home country's sun for granted, not knowing that a sunny day everyday is never my answer. I'm not that warm, I'm not that bright, I don't have to be clear all of the time.

Clouds gather to announce a rain might come soon, and rain prayers are always answered. Little did I know that those clouds are actually my friends. Never have I admitted that those clouds are just me.

When I was an engineering student, I  was taught to assume the unknown variables so that I can solve the problems at hand, or even prove a mathematical theory! But that was 15 years ago. Now 15 years later I can say that this assumption mechanism no longer works, not in real life. The unknown is unknown. I can tell you that my intuition worked more often than not, but my most significant moments of growth (and sometimes the happiest moments) were when my intuition was proven wrong. Why? Because my intuition worked against me most of the time. So I guess it's time to stop guessing. I'd rather seek clarity and be unjustly denied that right, than take the easy way out and just assume out of fear.

One of the writing prompts that captured me was "Your ideal reader" and I kept writing about that reader until it expectedly turned into an ideal friend. There I met yet another imaginary friend.. Or maybe writing itself is my perfect friend in a hurtfully imperfect time. Here's how I described my ideal reader.

I'm not burdened by my own story, advice, or judgments. There's nothing about what you're going to say that 'I already know', despite all the time we spent together. The one thing I know is that your silence is not ok. Stop hiding because I see you anyway. You didn't need to be so loud in the crowd either, I heard you anyway. It won't burden me if you are too bright or too dark. I'm not too broken to take your trouble. Be my trouble this time, and hopefully I'll see you more clearly. Tell me more and don't worry about my time, you're not wasting it. You're not taking it from anybody. You've got my time for no reason at all. Rather than looking out for who might be more deserving than you, just tell me more.