Write what you know

They all tell me to write what I know. I wish I knew more. Everything I've written has been other people, other stories, far far away from my own life. Because I'm sick of thinking about what I know. I've spent my whole being living in my head. Now even the sweetest memories have dust on them; all of them worn out like a shirt that's been through the washer too many times.

I know what it feels like to be a girl. I know what it feels like to be in love. I know what it feels like to have someone reach into you and see you. I know what death looks like. I know what life looks like. I know what sex feels like. I know what heartbreak feels like, too: those minutes when you're all by yourself and you let out those first few wails like some sort of grieving banshee and all of a sudden you're where you said you'd never be, on the floor alone—pathetic, so alone.

But there's so much more that I don't know. Like what it feels like to be a boy. Like what it feels like to be denied a basic human right. Like what it feels like to pull your life out of your chest and look at it. Like what it feels like to say the words "fuck you" and really mean them.

I want to know these things that have never happened to me. I want to take different voices and make them all talk through me like some kind of spirit. If I write about the unknown for long enough, maybe I can know something new, something better than what I am now.

But even while I write this, I know I am cheating myself. There's a reason we write what we know. We've spent enough time turning our own knowledges around in our heads that when we finally decide to put them to words they come flowing out with purpose, like they were always meant to be on that page. And it means so much more when we're done, doesn't it?