Speaking for the Dead

I think about all sorts of things while I’m trying to get to sleep at night, or when I’m lying in the dark after giving up on sleep. Many are gone without a trace by morning, something for which I definitely need to find a workable solution, but one has stuck with me, coming to mind every now and then.

I thought about the difference in what we leave behind now compared to what we would have left just a few years ago.

I have boxes of notebooks full of stories and poetry and thoughts on anything you could think of, but they’re all old. I haven’t written anything of that level of importance by hand in a long time. It’s all on WordPress or email or Microsoft Word. Or notepad on my iPhone, when it has to be.

No, I know none of it is of such great value to the world at large, but it’s part of me, and when something happens to me, the people who love me will want that. I would.

Or would I? Would I want everything? It’s easier to free deep dark secrets anonymously, on the Internet, than to leave them in a comp book in the bottom of a closet, where they’re sure to be read one day.

Once I’m gone, there’s no explaining. What’s been left unfinished is now finished. Who knows that the reason this post is still only a draft is because it just wasn’t coming out right?

Or maybe that’s only a writer’s dilemma. A perfectionist’s problem. Surely there wouldn’t be so many websites showcasing idiotic Facebook posts if everyone felt the need to choose the most precise word so keenly.

Even so, I’d still have to err on the side of oversharing. Throw caution to the wind and understand that even those sloppy phrases are still something that I’ve created, and something that came from the best part of me. Something that shouldn’t go undiscovered forever.

I don’t want everything I’ve ever written to disappear unremembered in the morning. But then, who doesn’t long for some form of immortality?

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