Beinvenidos

When I was 9 years old I wrote a poem about the Pony Express. I'd seen a brick tower with a small brass plaque that talked about the dust and turmoil and the adventure of running mail across the country via horseback. It wasn't a great poem and it was slightly over dramatic, but it was mine. I enjoy the fact that it was one of the few times I've ever been able to rhyme unabashedly because at 9 years old even creating a line like "Away in a far desert land" made me feel invincible. I was taking my experience, however mundane, and turning it into an adventure. Translating the emotion and the intrigue that I felt into something tangible and transferable.

As an adult I deal with a wider of array of things "tangible and transferable", things like debt, blame, and sexually transmitted diseases. Through it all I've still held onto a copy of my "Pony Express" and my oddly intrinsic desire to air my dirty laundry to the world. I have a closet full of journals and legal pads that will take me just as many years to sort through. I have boxes full of words, quotes, and waiters numbers written on napkins, dollar bills, and even a gonorrhea pamphlet. I have roughly 16 email accounts full of written longings and dreams as well as solicitations for raunchy photos and dangerously casual sex. I've developed business plans and community programs. I've spent 25 awkward years trying to figure out what the fuck I'm doing and I've written about it all.

Initially I dreamed of writing my own personal opus and sharing with the world all the deep and insightful Epiphanies I've had in my short life. I wanted to spread joy and inspiration to the everyone who picked up my book. I figured I'd censor my experiences and language and find a way to turn having crazy monkey sex on the hood of my car with a total stranger into a touching and lesson filled experience. I would fill the pages of a book with grandiose and unconventional accomplishments. I'd shout to the world of my power, my hopes, my altruistic endeavors and know that I was inspiring millions around the world to rise from their lazy boys and dive head first into life. I knew I would accomplish great things. I knew that I would touch the lives of millions around me in a way that would change them and the way they viewed the world themselves. I knew I was different.

What I didn't know at 9 years old was that "different" would translate into my charmingly neurotic, foul mouthed, occasionally tactless self. It's led to quite the dichotomy. Here I am, still as altruistic and idealistic as ever but with a new touch of sarcasm and a fairly sordid sexual past. I haven't accomplished anything earth shattering or world renowned. I've spent years working as a waitress, driving a shuttle bus, opening and then running away from legitimate entrepreneurship opportunities. I've done little more than master the art of observation and the ability to suck the lesson out every man, mistake, and accomplishment I come in contact with.

Yet I still have the burning desire to write and share my life with those around me, I still dream of inspiring people to rise up and live with passion. I know that even if I haven't managed to becoming a sickeningly optimistic life coach that many of you will still find a glimmer of hope in the horrific and embarrassing mistakes I've made. I'm a person, just like you. I get angry, I get sad, I throw shit when I'm frustrated, and I still look at small brick towers in the middle of no where and think of my stupid poem.

In all honesty, it makes sense that a tall, solid, phallus shaped structure would have initiated a fire within me; I'm simply grateful it was a literary fire.

A sarcastic, insightful, and potentially offensive literary fire.