In Memoriam Of The First Sentences Lost in My Drafts
Sometimes I imagine the graveyard of Google Docs filled with first parts of longer pieces that for one reason or another, died in the drafts. As a rule, I love a first sentence but often I don’t know what I’m going to write about until I get that first sentence down.
In the spirit of sharing things that aren’t perfect, and in knowing that some of these may be full pieces you might read one day (but probably not), here are some of my favorites:
“I never thought I’d see the number $60,000 attached to a renovation project and breathe a sigh of relief because it wasn’t more. I am broken, home renovation has broken me.”
Along with “Things I asked my contractor this week: Do people just have $60,000 in a bank account when they start to work with you? Or do they start with some of that and then hope for the best?”
“I grew up in the same holler as my grandma, and her grandma before her, and her grandma before her, and none of them seemed all that happy about it. Where does my joy come from? Why do I like North Carolina so much?”
“I think we really are just carpe-ing enough diem to make the awful things that are going to happen in our life a little more tolerable.”
Along with “God I wish life was just all sunshine and rainbows.”
Along with “Climbing shit mountain…” No context there.
“I feel like I’m in a nightmare where I signed up for a half marathon, and trained for a half marathon, only to find myself on race day in the wrong lane, running a full marathon.”
“I Am Barely Breathing March 19th, 2021.”
And a common theme:
“As a child, I was terrified of dying, and so I thought about it constantly. “
“This weekend I cried multiple times over the joy I felt from the friends who fill my life and I was stone cold sober on the dance floor of a very gay party whilst doing it.”
“Sometimes it takes dying to every version of yourself you thought a place could hold, to be reborn as something more radiant and just somewhere else.”
“When I lost religion, I thought I lost myself and along with her, God. Instead, I found myself and a greater connection to a God that is so much more expansive than I was raised to believe in.”
“You haven’t lived until you’ve cried on a dance floor to Robyn’s Dancing on My Own.”
“One thing no one tells you about your 30s is that you might find yourself standing in the middle of a dusty field, declaring that you’re a Bonnaroo girly.”
May we all contain the multitudes of my rough drafts.
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