“Who cried a river and drowned the whole world
And while she looks so sad in photographs
I absolutely love her
When she smiles”
-“Absolutely” by Nine Days
Sorry, once I started it, I knew that it needed to be finished or all of my
fellow millennials’ minds would be broken waiting for the hook.
Do you remember spending time learning about big moments in history? The days before Pompeii blew. The weeks leading up to the Revolutionary War. The minutes before the bombs dropped in Pearl Harbor or Hiroshima. While you were reading about that you might have been thinking “this boring and why do we have to learn these things, blah blah blah.” You might have been thinking that it is terrible for such a time to have existed. Meanwhile…
I was wondering about how it felt to be alive during that time. I wanted to know what it was to live as the world turned on Its head. I wanted to know what an “average” girl was doing at that time. What did she think about her world? Was she happy with it? Did she want to change it? Did she want to hide from it? How did she cope when the world got dark? History books are great because they can teach us a lot through the story that we are willing to tell in it, the story we are willing to let survive. But what about in that moment, what was their reality?
Little did I know, I was allowing myself to answer that question all along.
This blog and its archive have been an extension of the journals I have kept since I was 11. Truly, this could matter to no one and that would be okay. Maybe someday someone will find this, combing through the catalogues of the antiquated internet and think this is a treasure trove of first hand recount. Maybe they will think it is complete rubish and skip right over it. They would probably be right to. I don’t truly document any “history” and we millennials have lived through plenty. I am, currently, no one of note and that is likely to remain unchanged. The beauty of this blog, this decision to record life is that it doesn’t matter.
I think, therefore I am. I am, therefore I must tell the story.
…I guess.
“Ashley, what on earth are you blathering on about?” you ask. Great question. ALL of this is merely a preamble for a decision I’ve made. “I’m gonna give all my secrets away.” I have lived a moderately weird and somewhat interesting life and I think it is fun to tell the story of it. I also think that it is about to get more weird and more interesting so, I figure, you might want to come along for the ride. Maybe something great will come of this. Maybe it will be dust in the wind. Who cares either way. I only know that this is one of the stories that has been clawing its way out of my chest for decades and if I don’t start putting it down on “paper” and sharing it with the world like I know I should, I will be letting myself down. What I am trying to say in all this, is that it’s about to get real-er.
Consider yourself warned now. I make no promises to be clean, modest, wholesome, outlandish, salacious, risque, or explicit. I only to promise to tell the story as I feel it needs to be told, to put it down in one spot so that it can be found.
My great hope is what my hope always is when I interact with the world around me…
That another someone will feel slightly less alone.
So…Selah and, for now, Cheers!
-A
Eating My Way Through It 