This week was hot. The garden did not like it. It’s the quick change, I think. The plants were given no time to acclimatise. Therefore, not much grew this week. The garden just simply tried to get through it.
What did grow this week was the idea of what is possible. I have read books all my life. Other people wrote books. People like me read books, they did not write them. And then, this week, my words were put into print. Not just on social media which feels temporary and unfinished, but in an actual book. Like something quite permanent.
I suddenly realised that people like me do write books. People like me who like words. People like me who think deeply. People like me who are ok with being vulnerable. Nothing is so vulnerable as writing down thoughts and having the audacity to believe that somebody else might read them, identify with them, perhaps even find them helpful or just enjoy the words for their own sake.
It makes me think of my nieces. I want to send them each a copy. Not because I think they will necessarily enjoy the content. There is perhaps too much life in the book. Too much of the understanding that life is a bit shit sometimes. You don’t want to know about that as a teenager. You want to know that there is always a happy ending and that the world is just and good always wins. You even believe that there is good and bad. You haven’t learnt about complicated.
No, the reason I want to send it to my nieces is because they know I am the most ordinary of humans. They know that I turn into a 12 year old around my family. They know that I often don’t say the right things. They know that I am flawed. They know all these things about me and yet my words have been published. That means that they, as also very ordinary humans, could do whatever it is that they currently think is not possible for them.
Realising that what is possible depends entirely on whether you believe it is possible for you is a late lesson to learn at 47. I wish I had learnt it much sooner. Then again, I might have gone my entire life not learning this. Then again, I did know it. I just didn’t think it applied to anything at all.
An author. Wow. Who knew?
