Being home — or returning to a place I used to call home — is weird. Maybe you’ve experienced something like this, too.
Being here makes my life feel like it has a split end, like I have one initial residual life and identity here in Cleveland, and a secondary new life that I have created for myself in South Dakota. Like a branching timeline, from which a second Sarah Rhea Werner waves at me, a glitchy representation of what might-have-been.
There are some confusing gaps between these two selves — variances in occupation, relationships, agency, temperament, weight — yet a distinct throughline of writing.
I was a writer before, in this previous life, and I’m a writer now in my present life. And I will be a writer in any given number of futures.
I’ve only been able to journal (a.k.a. do my Morning Pages) once or twice here amidst the family chaos, but this morning at my sister Rachel’s kitchen table I found myself scrawling, “ALL I WANT TO DO FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE IS WRITE.” And I realized I meant it.
Now, this wasn’t always a certainty, but rather has become one, as I have continued to choose writing day after day, week after week, year after year. Our lives are made up of day after day, and our identity follows the throughline we connect to it.
I don’t believe in fate — rather, I believe that we create our own destinies, one day at a time, with the choices we make every hour, minute, and second.
What is your throughline? What are you choosing today?
Words & warmth,
Sarah