What to make of a writer who has forgotten how to write?

Not in the tactical sense, of course, where the pencil still makes sweeping, often unintelligible, marks across a crisp blank page. And not necessarily writer’s block, for there have been ideas and thoughts. Just no words.

At 22-years-old, I received everything I ever wanted. Right job, right city, right timing. It was as though the universe had discovered my to-do list and carefully checked each box on my life plans. What we didn’t account for, the universe and I, was that despite all these right plans, I was the wrong person.

Rather than living my happily ever after and floating though my destiny on the wings of a dream come true, I discovered that wish fulfillment does not a happy life make. On paper, everything was perfect: from the Empire State building sunrises to the Hudson River sunsets. Through every experience, it felt as though I was a character in a book; a fictional person living among the hustle and bustle of Manhattan’s sensible grid. Coffee in one hand, work phone in the other. Red coat billowing in the wind. I could see it all, the picture-perfect snapshots with a curated soundtrack always faintly playing in the background.

I could see it, but I couldn’t feel it. It may as well not have even been happening to me at all.

Though there was a time when I would have never confessed to this, I must admit that I knew something was amiss from the very origins of my star-crossed New York love story. The job, the apartment, the friends: a tender whisper of conscience chanting with every steady heartbeat This. Is. Fine.

But I didn’t want fine. I have never wanted fine. I have never settled for anything less than magic.

But headstrong and determined, I went about my business by continuing to settle in. I was so young, on the cusp of a twenty-third birthday. I had secured my dream job in my dream city. I convinced myself I was simply being silly. Homesick for the place I had never left before this moment, and the family that had become a casualty of distance.

That was my first and perhaps only mistake: refusing to listen to my intuition, the compass that had yet to lead me astray.

So I persisted, insisting that my life would normalize. When visiting home, I would blow in from New York: a picturesque publicist climbing the ladder to get where she needed to go. I intentionally displaced myself to create as much distance between my new and old lives as possible, talking and walking faster than this sleepy hometown could handle.

No matter how much I tried to shape myself into the person I was already pretending to be, every time I came back, I wanted to return to New York a little less. But how could that make sense when all I had been working towards since I learned how to dream was secure, and just an eight-hour bus ride away?

In the months since I’ve returned, I have learned the hard truth that the provincial life I thought I’d been leaving was never the enemy. It had never been the place that was wrong, but the person. For a quarter century, I rebelled against a suburban life that patiently waited for me to be ready for it.

Everything I had thought to be inadequate: the job possibilities, the house on Wayne Road, the friends who I’d grown up with: the fault was not in them- it was in my perception of them.

I do not pretend that my life has been difficult. I suppose it has the normal ups and downs, no better and no worse than most others. Yet, I have been ungrateful and discontent. I have wanted more at the expense of what I already have. I fell in love with long distances, and skipped the light fantastic out of town.

Long distance, once my source of desire, is now my fount of clarity. I look around here, at this town that has always been home, and I can see it clearly for perhaps the first time. I don’t imagine prison bars, but now experience windows. There are no more dead ends, but only opportunities. I see warm and friendly faces. I see the people who still wanted me even when I stopped wanting them. There is music and laughter and art and love.

And if I look hard enough, I begin to see myself. All the people I’ve been, and all I hope to become.

When I was twenty-two years old, I got everything I ever wanted. When I realized I didn’t want it anymore, I thought I had nothing.

I was wrong. I still have everything.

I get to create a new dream, and there’s so much beauty in a blank canvas. I’m trying to let the pure whiteness inspire instead of scare me.

I get to discover a new purpose. I set out this time more knowledgeable than the last. I know what I am capable of withstanding, and what I am capable of building.

I get to be more gracious, more generous, and more loving. I get to be less selfish. To dedicate my life to the service to others: To my family, to my community, to strangers.

I get to make something. A start. A story. A life. Magic.

And so for everything that’s ended, there’s one thing I never really lost: these capable words. And they’re finally ready to begin again.