All of The Lies I Tell Myself and Others

No witty title because it’s a free-thought ramble

Photo by Cathryn Lavery on Unsplash

When did productive become the measurement our society swears by? Why are we all so thirsty for validation? Being more? Doing it better? Doing more faster? Doing more better and faster? The world needs to take a break.

I’m not the best at saying or even writing my true feelings. I know that. I write what I think people will like. I judge how well I’m doing by how many hearts on Instagram (stock photos get the most btw), how many virtual thumbs up on Facebook, and how many claps on Medium. I’ve gotten in the habit of posting a photo right before I go to bed so I can wake up to people liking the “random” photo I’ve chosen and my witty caption. I legitimately check my social media channels first thing when I get up. I salivate over followers, and I’m devastated when I lose them as fast as I gain them. I knew social media was going to be a problem for me. I just thought I’d be better than this.

I cuss in my writing because sometimes I think it just makes the point better. I’m also a Christian who’s ashamed to be a Christian at times. I want to be liked more than I want God to save the world. I’ve wanted to get a septum piercing, shoulder tattoo, and dye my hair purple for years, but also, I don’t. It’s not what good, Christian women do. My mother is still super proud of my almost 40-yr old brother for never drinking. I know this because she reminded me when I came home after a date with whiskey on my breath.

I was a virgin when I got married, and I hated losing my virginity. Not the experience, but the actual loss of identity that isn’t talked about in the Christian community when you equate virginity with being the purest, best, holiest person. Sure, I did it “right” and was married, but after, I felt like just another black girl who’s had sex. I felt like I wasn’t me anymore, which I get is silly, but holy-what-a-horrible-feeling-to-have.

I don’t want to post personal information about me. Partly because I write about differing topics on all of my social media depending on who’s reading it. Partly because I want to be mysterious and sophisticated. Partly because I want to be famous without looking like I want to be famous. Fame is cool. Wanting fame is just tacky, you know?

I’ve had pseudonyms since I started writing online. Moe Taylor was one. OctoberMoe was another. Olivia Hannah Brynn was one, and then Elizabeth O’Shea. I’ve had more secret names than anyone who isn’t James Bond should have.

There are days I feel like I haven’t had one original story idea since I was seventeen. Most of my writing from that time (including this post) are the darkest, heaviest things I’ve written, but they were truly mine. Truly how I was feeling and thinking. I’ll read other writer’s ideas/stories and get ideas from them. Reading another’s words makes me want to write my perspective on that same topic.

The ideas I want to write about are all over the place and halfway fleshed out. I know to be the TOP WRITER, you have to have a cohesive theme, and I don’t. It’s why I wiped all of my Instagram pictures from last year.

1. Why productivity tips can go die in a fire
2. Why I hate/love the church and God
3. A LGBTQ+ love story (even though I have no experience and personal conflict around this)
4. How I can’t get rid of any of my old blogs cause I like to recycle my writing with updates I think of two years later
5. How perfectionism is an easy excuse for the rotting of my soul now
6. Why I want to spit in the face of all of those “Travel While You’re Young!” articles that seem to mock me being broke and the fact that my depression would follow me halfway across the world
7. How I don’t know what I’m searching for anymore and I’ve been searching since 16
8. All of my conflicting feelings surrounding body modification, drinking, smoking, etc… being a grown adult who feels tethered to other’s opinions of me
9. How do I start exercising at 27 years old with no former training/experience at all? ( I was a home-schooled book nerd. I know how to play NOTHING.)
10. Why I want to be validated so much (and how to make it stop?!?)
11. How I tagged a writer I admired in my work accidentally on Medium in one of my first stories (Hey, how you doing John Gorman?)
12. Sex and poverty and psychology (though I have very little experience in each)
13. A documentary script or a slice of life movie
14. How I kinda want to be a white man to see how it would feel
15. Why I’ve wanted to be a white woman 65% of my life
16. How I don’t watch shows/movies until years after they’ve come out yet I pretend I’ve seen all the classics
17. Something Original. Anything Original

I don’t know why I’m writing all this. I’m sick in bed and should probably just keep watching random movies on HULU.

To the three readers of this, enjoy the brutal honesty and rambling.