It starts and ends with Faeries.
I am four years old, sitting in the back of our green Honda Accord in my little pink car seat, telling stories with my dad. There is something about a waterfall, an entrance to another world behind it as if you could pull back water like a shower curtain. I can’t remember if the faeries were pixies or the size of the humans they led into their homeland to play savior. Yet there they are, clear as day, voices like bells calling to me in the backseat as the West Virginia hills fly past me. And there is evil in the world we are building. A malicious force trying to come after the little girls who have wandered into faerieland. A force that wants them to drink the faerie wine and dance until they die. But my father and I will not let bad things happen to our protagonists. They will save faerieland and come home in time for supper, or at least come home in time for us to pull into the driveway of our house on 15th Street. When we get home and our story has concluded, my mom will read the Rainbow Fairy books to me in my Tinker Bell themed bedroom as I fall asleep and I will dream of having wings. The little bells still chiming in my ears, with the Fae whispering to me to come home.
I am twenty-two now, days away from moving into an apartment with my best friend, who is more like my sister, and it is still about the faeries. The little creatures look a heck of a lot different now in my readings and writings, but at their core, my world is still occupied by folktale and legend turned wild. There are the faeries I studied at college, that of Morgan Le Fay and Sir Burtilak, and the many creatures in the Lais of Marie de France. There are the sexy faerie beasts in the romantasy books I enjoy so deeply, ones with taloned wings and trickery to outsmart God, who are gentle when the moment is right. There are the badass fae women who slay armies at the flick of the wrist and erupt into fire to save their people. In all shapes and sizes, the fae are with me always. So when I am asked why I am a writer, I have to turn to the little creatures who started my obsession with storytelling and keep me coming to the page, even when I am not writing about fantastical worlds with magic wielders and pixie dust.
I am a jack of all trades, master of none. I dabble in poetry and fantasy, but I am primarily an essayist, which is why, dear reader, I come to you today in this form. I have wanted to start a blog since I was five years old and read The Cobble Street Cousins, where the girls write a newspaper for the small circle of adults that surround them. Or perhaps it was earlier than that, as my mother has been blogging my entire lifetime. Regardless, it has been a dream held for far too long, and the excuses have finally run out. There is no more schoolwork stopping me from writing what I want. No papers due, no portfolios to pour over, no more choir rehearsals to attend. There is just me and my computer, and the words trapped inside of me, straining to get out.
Yet still I hesitate. Do I really want my words out there in the world? When I was in high school they drilled it into our heads that everything you put on the internet is there forever. Am I ready for permanence? That is why I am so scared of publication after all. When I was seventeen and wrote my first chapbook, my instructors told me that in six months I would look back and cringe at my work. They said the embarrassment is a good thing, a sign of growth. But I hold those words close to my chest. Because they were correct, I do look back on that little book and take in a sharp inhale with every stanza. Who is to say the same thing won't happen here? That I will open my laptop next year, or month, or even tomorrow and recoil at the words I dared to think were adequate enough for the public eye.
In the end, I don’t think I have much of a choice. As I said, there are no excuses left to keep me from doing what I have wanted to do for so long. Plus, my mother says I need to start getting my work out there. Which is why I have invoked the fae today, to be brave for me when I cannot be brave. To call back tp the child in the back of their father’s car with an imagination bigger than the state, who wanted more than anything to tell stories. Here we are, baby girl. Here we are.
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