I Want To Be Worth Writing About

“Who is that about?”
“Please don’t blast me on the internet.”
“Are you going to write about me?”

The comments about my job and the topics (ie: people) I have chosen to write about barely even sting anymore. I hear them all the time and fake laugh along, maybe throw in an, “I know, watch out ya’ll!” of my own. More often than not I simply ignore it because the jokes are old and unoriginal and, frankly, people can do better.

But when going through my own bibliography I’ll stumble across an old title or a sentence I love that I wrote about someone specific. Rather than thinking, “Oh well I really showed him by writing those things,” it’s more a feeling of nostalgia. I’m not flooded with anger or resentment about anyone. Instead I think about hands leading me through crowds, green eyes staring at me from across fire pits, or the way his fingers would try to connect the freckles on my back like a maze.

It’s not about vindicating myself; it’s about treasuring something I loved.

There’s this negative association that being written about is always bad thing. It’s something to be avoided, something to never want.

Watch out for the musician or you’ll be a song.
Watch out for the poet or they’ll look for a rhyme to your name.
Watch out for the writer or you’ll be semi-anonymously blasted forever.

It’s as if getting involved with someone who pours their real life into their creativity automatically means putting yourself up for crucifixion. They pan through pieces to be sure they didn’t make an appearance. They pretend to laugh it off when someone compares you to Taylor Swift and assures that they’ve never shown up in your work. But then they’ll see a phrase or a title and send a panic-riddled text reading with no sense of chill, “Is that about me?”

To which that I have to ask, “So what if it is?”

So what if it is about you, or inspired by you? So what if I wrote it at almost two in the morning and hoped someday you would see it and recognize the line about your blonde curls? So what if I published something about the man who broke my heart so terribly and didn’t worry about if a mutual friend could put two and two together?

I don’t write about things that bore me. I don’t write about things just for the sake of writing. I don’t write about things that are mundane and cavalier. I don’t write about every day occurrences or something I know will come up again on just any other Tuesday. I don’t write something unless it’s worth spending the time to write about.

To be written about is honestly flattering. It means:

“Look at this. Look how much of an impression you made on me. You affected my life to such a degree that I couldn’t contain it and had to expel it in the way I do best. I was so inspired by you that something actually happened. You changed me, shaped me. You were important. And you were so important I had to make it as permanent as I could.”

Every time I get involved with another artist I think about what it would be like to know that feeling. To hear a melody, see a canvas, or read something and be metaphorically hit in the face with a secret. That jarring, sudden-punch-to-the-gut to silently know, “Holy shit that’s about me.”

You know what? I’d be so honored.

If you write about me, I was worth writing about. I wasn’t a drop in the bucket, or a notch on the bedpost. I wasn’t just another girl who said they liked your smile or who said, “I bet you’re going to do cool thing someday.” It means that I resonated, that I left a mark.

I want nothing more than to mean enough to someone to be written about.

So if I write about you, it means you meant something.

You’re welcome.