Lonely Monologue

"I mean, some people create change in their lives and some people let change create them," she said. "It's like, a job, a partner, a career path, a place that you're unhappy with -  well, more, like oppressed by - but, you're also too scared to leave it. It's catching your period in a public bathroom without any tampons. It's being stuck."

Her friend listened carefully, patiently as ever and urged her to continue venting with sympathetic eyes.

"I'm lost... I'm so fucking lost in this haze of activities occupying my body 'til suffocation. I'm lost because the directions in front of me are - directionless. They lead to places only conceivable in the extent to which they amplify my anxiety. I don't see progress before me and maybe that's because no matter where I am, who I'm with, or what I do, I'm never gunna think I'm adequate. I'll always be unsatisfied. I'll always be a worthless piece of shit behind the defective composure of a sweet young lady. People will always see through my shitty mask 'cause I'm overly emotional, melodramatic, self-absorbed, and broken."

Her friend came in closer to her from across the sheets and gently pulled her head toward his breast. He held her there in that corner of the room reserved for self-destructive breakdowns and uncontrollable sobbing, where she often thought about how the width of a body pillow leaned against the wall could feel like the shoulder of a friend.

"Maybe 'stuck' isn't the right word. It's more like captivity. I can tell because the anxiety just builds up right in the center of my chest. It tightens and creates pressure, painful tension. It's unresolved energy. It's the words that I'll never actually get to say to anybody. Like these."

Writing IRL

I am a writer. It's easy to say but difficult to prove. A lot of people think that since they aren't published or contracted yet that they aren't writers. I don't think that's true. I think being a writer is about the care, energy, and time you put into the craft and practice of writing. My name is Aliyah and I'm an unprofessional writer. I have not been published, paid, contracted, nor do I have an established following, but I am a damn good writer.

Something that is not clarified often enough is how to do something. They're like, "Do your taxes or else IRS will come for you," "Make these aggressive sales targets or you'll lose your job," "Get published or else we won't publish you," and I just wonder how? Some people will be human enough to show you the way and it'll be up to you to utilize that resource to achieve whatever goal but, with appalling frequency, we are expected to just do it. Then, if you get it wrong enough times, they persecute you despite context or circumstance because results (which pretty much always translates into money) matter more than people.

Now that we're good and lost in Aliyah's personal life and opinions, lets move on to my statement of action. Write! Write like it's the only genuine thing left in this world of trashy, fallacious, low quality, superficial, digressive mass media. These popular platforms, such as YouTube, are really important but I think that we mustn't let video, audio, or images overshadow classic text, but maybe that's an older way of thinking. Still, writers are important and needed everyday for these other platforms to exist, for much of anything to exist and I think that if we as writers can strive to recognize our own value and assert that to others then we would be valued more (and paid more!) by employers. Don't let yourself fall out of practice because you don't think it's a profitable use of time. It's more beneficial than a dollar could quantify.