Introducting...Me :-)

I've had a million blogs.
and I've never been able to keep up with them.
My thoughts always come out
in erratic bursts of creativity
and just like the typical Gemini
I'm always changing my direction...
but one thing remains constant:
My love of words.

I love words.
I love language.
At the center of my being,
I am a writer.
When I talk, I talk as if I am writing.
When I read, I read from the perspective of a writer.
I am a writer...
in every sense of the word.

I recently had an epiphany
(...and by recently I mean today, lol)
that I will never be able to produce
the beautiful fictional story that lies within me
until I am able to first write my story.
Meaning that until I find a way to
take my personal history and put it down on paper
I will never be able to fully tell the story of any character.
I will never be able to write from the perspective of another
until I am able to document my own journey...in words.

I realized today that at the heart of being
is one question that I have yet to find a sufficient answer for.
As the great Dr. Valerie Prince expressed in a lecture today...

"All writing begins with inquiry... you don't have the answers, you just have the questions and through the process of writing you are vigorously searching for an answer".

So, I took a step back and asked myself: What question drives my writing? When I write, what is it that I want to know? What am I truly trying to express through my words?

And amazingly, the answer is simple.
When I write, I'm asking one question.
Who am I?

Who am I as a person?
Who am I as a daughter?
Who am I as a sister?
Who am I as a woman...as a Black woman...as a Black lesbian?
Who am I?!

It is this question that tears at my heart's strings.
It is this question that keeps me up at night.
It is this question that literally makes me write because not only am I trying to show others who I am, but I am actually trying to discover the
very
same
thing.

It is the question of identity. Where do I come from? Who do I come from? How did I get to this point in my life? And now that I'm here, who I am?

Thus, after figuring out the question, I realized that I needed to seek an answer using the appropriate literary mode: a memoir.
Yes, I'm only 21 but I need to write a memoir.
I need to tell my story.
I need to get this story...my story... out of my head.
I need to recount the memories which have plagued me. I have to write down the story of my broken childhood in order to continuing growing.
The memory of my past is holding me hostage and in order to free myself, I must write this story.