Hi. I’m the Girl Who Don’t Know it All. And still am.

I’ve thought of so many ways to start this experience, but I’ll begin with the simplest: Hi.

I’ve read countless articles and writing guides that say you need to hook the reader in the first paragraph. I agree, I’m one of those people who will close a book right away if the opening doesn’t speak to me. If the first page doesn’t connect, it’s back on the shelf.

So, I owe you an apology if this first page feels like a letter from someone you don’t know. Because, well, it is. This isn’t a novel, and it’s not a biography either. It’s something in between. It’s a collection of thoughts, poetry, and fragments of myself which I want to relate to you through that.

We’ve all been in our early twenties, when life feels both vibrant and uncertain. Then our late twenties, where we start to sense that maturity is growing in, yet the future is a blur. We start believing we understand adulthood, even though we haven’t truly experience it.

My early thirties brought me my marriage. The slow and quiet process of building something called a home. Learning to be a partner. Figuring out which role feels right, or at least necessary, to keep that home alive. 

And, then came the baby.

The motherhood.

The reality of a living being depending entirely on you to survive.

No one warned me that being a parent often means losing the version of yourself you once recognized. It’s a phase of transition, carefully picking up the old parts of you, choosing which ones to keep, and which ones to let go. And with everything you leave behind, there’s always a trace of you that lingers in distant memories. It’s real. It happened.

And maybe sometimes, you reconnect with those pieces. And in that, you discover the you that was, and the you that is, are both trying to find a place in this ever-changing life.

I’ve been writing this poetry collection since my early twenties, after my first big heartbreak. And here I am, years later, post-binge-watching a Martha Stewart documentary, deciding to finally compile it into one draft. Maybe someone out there will relate. (If you’re over 40, I’m sorry, I may not fully understand your phase of life yet.)

Maybe someone in my life will read this and understand how deeply I treasure them and how much they’ve shaped who I am today.

And if you’re still here,

let’s continue this conversation.

Confusion
At first, I was confused about pleasure,
how fleeting it is, how brief.
One must run to it, and then let it go.
It never meant to stay a while,
because we will be in search for it again.
And, searching is the core of it.
 
Then, I was confused about love.
What love is worth holding
if loving means surrendering to the possibility of pain?
Can I imagine selling my soul so easily,
ready to be crushed at any moment,
and yet doing it deliberately?
Sending gratitude even to the one who hurts me,
simply because he chose to be present.
 
And when I did give my soul to a man;
a man within my reach,
who reached out for me,
a man who wore my father’s face,
and spoke with my father’s voice.
I became confused about the idea of staying together.
To play the parts he needed,
and he played the parts I needed,
and together we performed,
the longest, most dramatic, beautiful, mischievous play,
as long as we could stand side by side.
I represented him, as he represented me.
 
Then came motherhood,
and I was utterly lost.
This one sent me back to school,
to lessons I never knew I needed.
The theory and the practice never matched;
every chapter felt different in reality.
It was as if I’d been thrown into a kindergarten for mothers,
learning how to hold, how to let go.
But oh, how I love being a mother!
even as I wonder, endlessly,
how to do it better.
 
I believe in every season of life,
we stumble,
as though strangers to the world we live in,
never quite grasping the full shape
of what was, or what is.
 
We are born with a longing,
an ache for something unnamed.
And we live our days searching.
 
All writers, in the end,
write questions.
the same questions we all carry.
 
Not in hopes of finding raised hands
with answers,
but only to meet
yet another question.
 
And so, I remain confused about life in general.
Maybe, just maybe;
the answers are hidden in my own poetry.