Got a postcard from my former self sayin, “How you been?”…

We might have said goodbyes just a little soon Robbing lips and kissing banks under this moon. -“The Carpal Tunnel of Love”, Fall Out Boy

In the past few weeks I’ve been searching… I feel like I am searching for the woman I was last year… The woman who felt comfortable in the skin she was in and who tackled the tasks she faced without fear or question.

I feel as though the words in my body are overflowing and I must write them on anything and everything I can find.

As I sit over lunch writing on napkins, I try to grasp as many words as I can and form them into coherent speech. I’ve been restless as of late. Manic and antsy. I feel like there are things I should be doing.

I’ve been trying to ease the voice in my mind urging me to create. To write. To sing. To dance.

I’ve been listening to an audio book that has sparked my own introspective into identity, culture, and legacy.

Maybe the pain in my hands are the result of the words that are trapped there. Maybe these arthritic pains are a call to arms.

Look down at the message on your wrist. Remember why you put it there. Inspire peace.

I feel like I am rambling the manna given to me by way of a napkin to soak up the rain of words I can no longer contain. I’ve been in a drought and I have been searching for the tap. Now the fountain is on and the basin fills faster than my hands can work.

Where have I been? One foot in Manhattan. One hand in Chicago. My heart in an apartment in Harlem. I have displaced myself. I have misplaced myself. Leaving pieces of me like horcruxes to be destroyed.

And what of my words? Where did I leave her? that girl I thought I knew? in the center of Herald Square? in a night I’d rather forget? did they take her out when they took my eggies? did they freeze her and keep her hidden from me?

I don’t know. I feel like I am in a shell. Like I cannot recognize myself lately. Is this what cancer really does? Strip you bare and kill you with your own self doubt?