Introduction:
Hi! My name is Lonnie and I'm an architectural designer living in the beautiful city of Chicago! I love any form of expression: dance, singing, theater, painting, photography, etc., but the form I tend to fall back on the most is writing. I by all means am not a professional on any of this, I would never call myself one, but I like the opportunities to study each form. Which is probably a reason why I love being in architecture, I can dabble and learn about so many different professions and elements to make a creation come to life.
I used to run different blogs and websites but those were all personal and were shut down for various reasons. I'm here because I'm challenging myself to write again, but this time I want to be more serious about it. I want to write about things I care about and I want to write about issues.
I've been spending a lot of time being ignorant and naive to the world and through writing I hope to become more opinionated. But I also write to find beauty in the world and inspire others.
So! To kick everything off, I have my first post below and I hope you enjoy my journey. I look forward to joining all of your journeys as well!
Week One: Why I Write
About 800 miles away is a box. Tucked away in the back corner of a closet, this box is covered in clothes two sizes (or more) too small, stories of a modern day young heroine finding her true love, posters and figures of a teenage girl's hero (an animated character but real to this girl's heart), and picture frames with smiling faces that no longer smile together.
Inside this box is another box, and yes we're back to the box. This other box contains a warning sign, one that I cannot recall its message, only its intent: inside lays the Pandora's box of a youth's soul.
Reality: It is a box filled of old journals placed inside a ziplock bag, just in case in an event a leak somehow penetrates the hundreds of layers of duck tape-no joke.
I couldn't bear myself to throw those journals away, knowing one day I'd want to read them again chuckling over how horribly I handled my crushes, or how angry I was at my parents for being over protective. I want to read about the twelve year old Lonnie and her relationship with her two year old brother. But the day when I read these journals again is the day I actually will make the effort to somehow cut through all those layers of tape, I made sure not to make it easy.
For as long as I've known I've been writing. My heart pours itself over words to create the colors I need to paint a picture of my soul. It's gotten me over my worst heartaches as I relived my stories and watched the colors blend with the sway of my brush.
I love the use of language. In fact, my greatest love story once told me, "Lon, you need to stop worrying. In fact, I'm so enamored with you I don't think I can ever stop loving you". I actually don't remember if that was how it went, but like the warning sign I can only remember the word 'enamored' and its intent. That there was a man who loved me and would use big words to prove it.
We fell in love through writing actually. His words, my words…entangled. Up until the very end it was a story through words.
I've moved on since then but I think there's remnants left shattered inside of me, and they're just little pieces of glass I can't figure out where exactly they are but I can still feel them lightly scratching me inside. It's not painful, but it needs to be addressed, taken out. I hope to approach this with my writing too.
There's a lot of factors that has stopped me from writing, but I'm challenging myself to write my story again. I'm writing to find my passion again. I'm writing to start learning about the world again. I'm writing to write an even greater love story.