I love the crinkling sound of paper, the feel of the page after the pen has its way with it, forever altered, a moment locked in time.  So why am I afraid of the crinkling, the lines on my body?  Why is the passage of time evident on my skin terrifying when I love the history indicated and held on the page?  Why should I fear the history my body tells when I revere it in other forms? The lines on my skin mean that I have lived.  There has been a passage of time that counts down a clock and means this life will end.  The lines on the page will be there forever—there is no time limit to them.  One is finite and the other infinite.  It’s funny how the end and the beginning can be so thoroughly mixed together. Both paper and skin etch the instances of our lives on them, one fleeting, one enduring.     

The things I fear on my body aren’t because of aging perse, that’s not entirely what I mean—like, growing and evolving and developing are essential to living—it’s how we learn.  It’s just aging means different things in the context of the living recording versus what I put on paper.  My books will hold my history forever—those pages are permanently marked with the thoughts I had in these moments, in this life, and I celebrate that.  But I’m afraid of the story my body tells.  I still fear it isn’t the life I’ve wanted to live.  Can I show that I’ve done all I wanted to do?  I think it’s the fear of wasting the time I’ve been given—and I know that’s true because I’ve wasted the time sharing so many of the same stories and thoughts that race through my mind constantly. 

It’s also the thought of how we always miss the full story regardless of where or how it’s recorded.  Like, the words I write can be understood in myriad of ways but so can what’s happened on and in my body.  We have no control over what is said of our story when we are gone whether it’s what we put in ink on page or on skin, or what we cut into ourselves, the lines of our experience written in infinite ways.  We have no say in how people interpret us and, I have whale medicine in me which means I’m a record keeper—it’s my makeup to record everything that’s happened and tell that story so people know what happened.  It’s not that the words I write aren’t the truth of what’s happening, but without the stories I’ve shared in those pages, the stories on my skin can be taken out of context—same with anyone.

I guess in the end history is history regardless of how or where it is recorded, and we will never know the full depth and breadth of people.  When we are gone all that’s left is an imprint, an echo of life.  People from 100, 200, 1000, 10000  years ago aren’t here to share their stories—we piece it together in the little bits we find and we make conjecture.  We tell a story of what we think that person was like.  We leave behind bits and pieces of ourselves, now more than ever with such a large digital imprint.  We can only guess—I guess in the end that’s all we can do regardless.  It’s all a best guess based on our experiences and what we’d think people would do. We will never have control of what people say or think whether in our time or a millennia from now—all we can do is live now and tell the story to the best of our ability.