Delving Into My Identity as Gray

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One of the more difficult things to realize was that Catherine E. Foreman can’t do what I need to do. That identity as a writer carried me this far, but the journey was far too long and egregious for her to get us where we deserve to be. She became so calloused by scars, she didn’t know how to feel the tender things around her. She was so consumed by her pain, drowning in it, she no longer knew how to write of life outside of it. Her mind was poisoned with black, like mold on an otherwise perfect piece of bread- one no longer sees the bread as food once the mold appears. She was brave and unbelievably strong, but she had too many years of being chained to the floor, and even with freedom available right before her, she would not know how to live in it. With that, Quintas Gray became not only a relief, but necessary. However, though this new identity carries the memories and hurt of the former, it’s with a new mind and a larger carrying capacity as this identity is utterly boundless. While Catherine could no longer write outside herself and was bound to non-fiction (even in poetry), Quintas Gray has opened the door to fiction, allowing me to feel and see like a newborn, but write like an elder, marrying the newness of Quintas with the “oldness” of Catherine. Like reading a book that opens your mind to a vast, complicated new world, leaving you parched for more, so has this discovery been for me. Where I was afraid to write before, I am now eager and overwhelmed with childlike curiosity. A hugely noteworthy aspect of Quintas Gray is the last part of the name, Gray, the “in between”. Quintas Gray is a balance-based identity, accepting the battle that rages within me everyday with Bipolar Disorder. While Catherine feared the gray agitation of trying to make sense of the extremes and control them, Quintas can give them freedom from the middle, finding peace in that gray, appreciating the fierce agitation as a sign of balance. This perception has allowed me massive amounts of freedom in my writing this semester and as a future writer,
abolishing the fear of “too much”. As one could imagine, it’s bled into my personal life as well, making me appreciate myself, no matter the identity. A book that proved to be very instrumental in this discovery was The Art of Stillness by Pico Iyer. Though he wrote about time management and its effects on the soul, I took away from it more a lesson on finding one’s free self and the peace and stillness that brings. Again, I found abandon to be the answer he was nudging me towards. Through glimpses of the lives of various people, Iyer reassured me that I’m not too old to start over, the years I’ve wasted don’t have to be a “waste”, and stillness doesn’t have to mean quiet. He was the first person to get through to me in a soul-deep way, that it is not only okay, but admirable to be me, and he only said it in a whisper. Given that Quintas Gray is new to me, I am confident that these new-found strengths (fiction and fiction-based genres) will only continue to grow and improve, and quite rapidly, I predict. Though I feel unsure in technique at times, I’m still eagerly moving forward, like a deer learning to walk, refusing to stop trying because there is so much world to explore. Realizing that words are legs that can take me anywhere I could ever want to go has shown me that I need more practice in my wild. I need to push further. I need to dare bigger. Freedom isn’t small, it isn’t pretty, it isn’t sensible or linear. It’s all of it. It’s everything I am, it’s every identity, it’s the white, the gray, the black, it’s everything I’ve thought of and everything I will never think of, it’s further than I can push, but it’s also right here. Inside of me. And at the heart of the progress I wish to make as a writer, is my desire to continually learn how to open all the doors and write from the inside out.
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Page 10 and 11: Poetry Is Poetry is my reprieve A m
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Page 14 and 15: Home Christmas lights Kitten fur Fl
Page 16 and 17: It Won’t Come Peacefully Everyone
Page 19 and 20: Gin Consciousness Is it that I ask
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Page 23 and 24: Holidays are cold now. No one has f
Page 25 and 26: You don’t even sound like you- yo
Page 27 and 28: Stay What does one say just before
Page 29 and 30: So much beauty. Every ray of sun th
Page 32 and 33: Embrace is a Dangerous Game - a sho
Page 34 and 35: arreling down on us- a tornadic sup
Page 36 and 37: “Aedus,” he said looking at me
Page 38 and 39: embraced him so tightly, I could fe
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Page 43 and 44: Identity - Part one of Chronicles o
Page 45 and 46: The Fujiwhara Effect - Part two of
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