There is what we lived and there is what we lived for.
I remember the day I finally felt alive. I was standing in the Women’s Library on the south side of London. I was wearing a blue shirt that said, “Would You Like to Smurf Around.”
The irony is Smurf is what my family calls me. That name always reminds me of my youth.
I had on running shoes, maybe I was prepping for a journey; maybe I was ending one. We walked through the library, I ran my hands across the aged books feeling bumps of different magnitudes along the way.
Then Lizzy gave out the kinds of scream you have when you have an epiphany. We all ran over to see what she had discovered.
In a glass case, that shielded the world from tainting what was my moment, there was a hand written magazine. Every oooed and aaahed. I was too far behind them to see what they were looking at and one second from the moment I’d feel like me.
Looking through the glass I read, I know it is nothing, but it is my nothing. It was hand written on a paper magazine.
It carried the feeling of a personal love not transcribed by some machine, but by my own penmanship that belongs to me and my nothing.
I’m pretty sure my heart stopped. My mind flashed back to papers I’d written in college that came back with failing grades and comments telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about, my writing skills lacked polish and my words meant nothing.
I made a vow to myself to never stifle what I had to say because someone didn’t agree. I left feeling rejuvenated, calm, free…me.
When I ended my summer in London, I went to work at a magazine and lived with my grandmother. When I came in the house my Grandmother came out, “Smurfet is that you?” “No, it’s Shirley,” I responded.
I have yet to write my own magazine, book or have my words heralded as legendary. But that’s what I’m living for.
