Thank you, Goddard

Readers are hooked on the drug that is poetry, novellas, novels, memoirs, and so on; and writers are the dealers.

It's why I started writing; it’s why I become enveloped in a story. It’s why I put myself through college, once again, even though I already had a career path. It’s where parts of humanity reside that are unattainable otherwise. Writing keeps our history. It keeps our sanity. It takes the parts of ourselves that seem tangled and rotten, and breathes life into them. It is, without a doubt, my favorite medium. Writing, and reading, is therapy for the world.

Though it’s been a year since I graduated from Goddard’s MFA Creative Writing program, this was the first chance to attend an in-person graduation since the pandemic began—and it’s likely the last time I’ll witness it on the West Coast.

It’s the day before Valentine’s Day, and a graduate asks, “So how long did it take you to get here?”

“Well, I left in November.”

The parts left unsaid are the eight thousand miles of zigzagging across the country. Sleeping at random, free campgrounds. Sweating in one, and shivering in another. It’s countless audiobooks, and the writing, and rewriting, and editing, and editing, and editing, and just screaming into the void about whatever story I’m working on. The time alone. The deciding that this was my last year of travel, searching for a job, and finding one. Pivoting my path again, but always, always coming back to the writing.

Though it wasn’t the intention to end a three-year journey on the road with a Goddard graduation, it was the perfect send-off. It also felt appropriate, since this is really where it started. My first year of travel was also the start of my master’s degree.

This time, it was only three days and two nights on campus, and it was completely worth it; because I've said it before and I'll say it again—keep writers in your life.

Reading is a drug—the best drug. A story can move into the innermost points of someone's vulnerability and beyond any known solar system. It can delve into civilizations that live solely in someone's mind. Writers collect all the sorrow and joy and hilarity and tragedy and everything and anything that exist in tandem, sloshing around in the infinite ocean of the human experience, and mush them together, and pull them apart, and gently lay them down word by word.

Hearing writers share their innermost thoughts is like watching someone hold out a piece of their soul and trust others will accept them without judgment. It is love in its purest form.

It's strange to think I've only known some of these writers for less than four years, and some for as short as a night. Previous to this journey, some writers were only tiny two-dimensional faces in rectangular squares on a screen during Zoom classes and online gatherings. To finally see their eyes and lips and cheeks and body in three-dimensional motion, to feel their warmth in a long-awaited embrace, to hear the excitement in each other's voices exclaim, “it's you!” as if we were suddenly reunited after decades upon decades of separation, well, it’s euphoric.

The last of our original cohort graduated, then, five of us—two graduates and three alum—slipped off-campus to sip wine and scotch and reminisce on a time that expanded into infinity, but in reality, was only three and half years. And then one by one we retreat back into reality. Back into the world. For our jobs. Our lovers. Our Children. Our friends. Our lives outside of writing.

And because of their words, their presence, this experience will forever linger.