before anything else, i am someone who feels things deeply. that’s probably why, since grade school, i found an outlet that i still come back to today: writing.
the thing about writing is that you don’t always have to be right. that is, unless you’re a fact checker, which is a real job, by the way.
i discovered writing when i was in second grade. i had a spare notebook and started filling it with silly stories about our little life. i don’t remember ever stopping. i never stopped writing. i never stopped expressing myself through words.
i wrote about the things i hated, which makes me cringe now, by the way. things like mosquitoes and people who didn’t knock. i wrote about them because, at the time, i would rather turn them into a blog post than post a status on social media.
then i wrote about being a mother. being a student. being a single mom. growing up. falling apart. healing. eventually, i found my voice.
sometimes i just wrote how i felt, whether it made sense or not. poetry, prose, experiences, sensual things. i won’t say sex life because that sounds too shallow, and honestly, what i write is far from what you would normally read in cosmopolitan.
i’ve been thinking about this for quite a while.
two years ago, i wrote a draft with only one word as the title: goodbye.
because i knew this moment would come eventually.
this will be the last blog i publish here.
my wordpress account will become private. my old posts will no longer be publicly available, but there is good news for my 100 subscribers: you can still read my work through the wordpress reader.
i know 100 subscribers may not sound like a lot to some people. but since 2017, i’ve reached milestones here that meant something to me. i watched this little corner of the internet grow. i met people through my writing. i connected with strangers who somehow understood the things i was trying to say.
and maybe i’ve never said this in any of my blogs before, but my subscribers are one of the reasons i kept writing.
even when writing became frustrating. even when i questioned whether anyone cared. even when i didn’t know what i was doing.
you were there.
you gave me your time. you read my words. you came back.
that means more to me than i know how to properly explain.
but now, i finally want to focus on my art.
those who have been reading me for years know some of what i’ve been through as a human being. being a child was never really much of an experience for me, and perhaps that is why i spent so much of my life looking for different ways to express the things i couldn’t say.
writing was one of them.
now, painting is becoming another.
it is a different and deeper language for me. with writing, i use words. with painting, i use colors. i put on the canvas what i feel, especially when i have run out of words.
sometimes i see colors before i find the sentence.
so i’ve decided to migrate my blog posts and the things i’ve written over the years to my store, www.jomorikawa.store.
i’m still using the same domain, but it will now be primarily a place for my paintings, along with the stories behind them, the process of creating them, and what each piece means to me.
i’m happy to finally do this.
i’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and maybe i just needed to finally give myself permission to move on to the next thing.
so, to wordpress, thank you.
thank you for nine years of letting me write here.
thank you for giving a girl who started writing with the grammar of a preschooler a place to grow.
thank you to everyone who read the silly things, the angry things, the heartbreaking things, the beautiful things, and all the things in between.
thank you for staying.
this isn’t really goodbye to writing.
i don’t think i could ever stop doing that.
it’s just goodbye to this particular version of me, and to this little home that held so many versions of who i was.
nine years is a long time.
and i think it’s time for me to make something new.
hello, goodbye.
and truly, thank you.