I Came All This Way…

 Excerpts from I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home by Jami Attenburg

Things are terrible everywhere, all the time, I know, but let me have my hope anyway. It doesn’t not alter…what I know to be true. Yet I take comfort in the burning embers. There are still embers!

When else do we feel so free as when we invent? Is there any sensation as free as that?

I could see with my own eyes I had certain skills necessary for the job: diligence, determination and focus. I loved feeling like “I could”.

What is that thrill when you give the right book to the right person? What psychological button does it press?

A great lesson: when someone tells you not to bother dreaming? They’re not on your side. 

Yet surely I have viewed myself through thousands of sets of eyes in my life without even knowing it. 

I think he has some idea of me engaged in a fantastic existence when, I know my truth, which is me, at home, alone with my books and my journals…

So much was being offered to me after years of no one noticing I existed. 

 My brain says, “ You need to feel better about yourself. You need to put yourself in a situation where you can succeed more days than not and the times you feel more successful are when you are sitting quietly at your desk, doing your work.”

I did not know, yet, how books would save me over and over again. I did not know that a book was a reason to live. 

I don’t have to be anywhere but here - forever, the ultimate privilege for me. 

I can barely put pen to page for a few days. This whole year has been like this - longer, forever, for some people. They would love it if we stopped doing our work and making our art…Do not let them stop you.