I have a weird thing about writing in notebooks. It’s weird I can put pixel to pixel but, pen to paper seems too permanent. I have tens of unfinished notebooks and none of them are filled. I don’t know what about it screams like once you finish it you can’t get it back… I mean I can go out and buy a new notebook but, it always feels like my words aren’t good enough for the page. Like I’m taking this space up from someone else.

I was cleaning up some of my old stuff and I found a few notebooks I hadn’t gotten to more than halfway with. Honestly, that’s a whole lot for me I mean halfway? Me?! but, it was a shock to me that none of my old childhood notebooks were even full. Did I even know back then that imposter syndrome would hit me so hard?

It’s crazy looking back on the things that I thought were important. The things that I wrote down. What girls I liked back then, my idea for Black Widowman, (This was of course before I: Knew that Black Widow existed and B. Before I knew what a widow was. So please don’t judge me too harshly.) scrawn ideas that flit through my ADHD mind while I was definitely thinking of other things except for school work.

I think besides just the imposter syndrome I have trouble taking up space. I have trouble just existing in my fullness. I have become unapologetic in the parts of my personality that’s not toxic but, I still feel like I don’t deserve the space I take up.

It’s a sobering kind of thought, really. I mean I don’t understand the people who can. Do they just decide one day that the space they take up is their own? Or is it a more gradual thing? Am I being polite or just subservient? I know it’s something I have to change about myself but, I don’t really know how so I’m just sitting here. Trying to fill this old notebook I got from an ex.