In my first few years of elementary school, I was obsessed with the lost and found.
I would look through the closet, knowing I hadn’t lost anything, knowing, too, that I wanted to enter into the lives of the lost, the lives of the found: these strangers, now confidantes, whose memories were attached to their discarded or missing artifacts of experience. As if, when I held this grass-plaid scarf, I could feel the neck enwrapped by it.
Another thing I enjoyed doing was purposefully losing and finding my things in the lost and found. After the final bell rang at 3, I’d leave a glove, a notebook, or a water bottle by the stairwell. The next day, I’d eagerly check to see if they were there – where all the lost things went. Maybe I was just a curious kid. Maybe I was just weird. Maybe I was conducting my own social experiments, ensuring that the students at Edgewood Elementary were moral.
Soon, I grew out of the first habit, but I've never really grown out of the second one.
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I began my blog near the end of 8th grade – designed the website and everything. At that time, it was called "Outdoors With Eian" and was primarily for science and nature writing.
My first post was called “Bunnies in the Backyard.” It's about the discovery of a litter of baby bunnies nestled in our garden – and it’s horrible; vomit-inducingly horrible. Here’s an excerpt:
"As you can see, the baby has its eyes closed. This is because the eyes are not fully developed yet, so the body will close the eyes to protect the eyes before they're ready and developed. Also, their eyes are very sensitive, fragile, and too delicate for bright lights. All in all, illumination will hurt their eye tissues."
Nobody enjoys reading that article, and I most certainly didn’t enjoy writing it. Neither did I enjoy writing the next 20 about mallard ducks or tree fungus or chloroplasts.
There was no “lost.” Only “found,” and the found didn’t even take much effort – just a quick Google search and clicking the first link that came up.
“Hypothetically Speaking” was born rather recently – this school year. I got sick of pretending that I liked writing bland science articles that were pure regurgitations from other – more importantly, better – articles.
I’m not sure where this science facade came from. Maybe because my dad is a biologist. Or because STEM makes more money in the future. Or because many of my friends found it interesting, and I felt the need to be just like them.
But everything’s different now. The content switched to personal essays. The homepage was decluttered and edited for a more minimalistic look. The name was changed – and so was I.
I love everything about “Hypothetically Speaking” – the true connection I have between my words and myself, the deep thinking done before ever starting a new post, the sense of accomplishment that comes with finishing a piece that feels authentic and unique, the supportive people who read and talk to me about it, the freedom of it, the vulnerability of it, the fact that each post is a dissection into myself, tearing into fissures of my heart, rearranging it, and seeing what forms on its own.
Perhaps what I love most is the fact that I can be lost and found again in every blog – a perpetual game of hide and seek.
It’s the place where I can leave my identity: my gloves, notebooks, and water bottles. Cheap watches and phone chargers. Umbrellas and mint-flavored lip balm.
The place where I can go back to, months later, dust them off, and reclaim them.
Yorumlar