First Drafts

As I've shared here before I'm attempting to resume my writing. For as long as I can remember I've been trying to have a love affair with words. I've been trying to commit words to a page which would make me happy, and let me feel as though I'm saying something. It has been like a typical romance with instances of love and hate. It has been like a typical romance in that there's been frustration. I'm surprised that in the time it's taken me to write this I've not hit backspace. If I were doing it old school writing in a spiral notebook there'd no doubt be a bunch of squiggly lines.

Here's one of my most recent first drafts. I shared it with my cousin who said it sounds so much like my life. I want to write what I know but I don't want to necessarily, get that deep, and give another window where everyone can peek in. I'm not sure if this first draft will be spared from the backspace.

I hate to imagine what would become of me if there were no promise of tomorrow. If there was not still the chance that all my past mistakes could be rectified, all my wrongs righted, and my future contentment assured. Somewhere in between my impulsiveness, my stubbornness, my often disassociated attitude, in between my confidence which is sometimes confused as arrogance, I can assure you is a pure heart. No, I’m not just saying that. One of my deepest desires for myself has always been to become the personification of the lyrics of India Arie’s song “Good Man” to become a ‘good man’. I have always felt quite sure that my being a ‘good man’ would make my mother proud and thus mean that I could wake up every morning and look myself in the mirror. I am still a work in progress. I am also still my mother’s son and have always aimed to make her proud. To make her proud however I have had to live my own life, I have had to journey toward discovering what it meant to have an authentic manhood. To be authentic, to be a man, to discover my own abilities and possibilities that would make me proud of myself. The road toward authentic manhood seemed at times to be the road less travelled.

I am by no means a typical man. Part of me my entire life has always resisted the label typical. To me typical also means stereotypical. I’ve blazed my own paths not in effort to be a trailblazer but as a means of surviving. If I would have become what others wanted me to become I would not have survived. I would not have been able to keep up. I wouldn’t have known what to do to keep up. I would not have dressed like them, talked like them, walked like them, spoke like them. I guess you can say my difference was my salvation and to this day I am different.