Who am I? To answer that is like trying to describe how water tastes. I am a person, a citizen of this country, but I am more than just a number on a page, more than just a whispered name. I am Mary Fran. I am searching for something that I wont know until I find it. I want to understand myself, to see the world in angles and curves, to dig through the sand of normalcy to find the treasure chest of spontaneity, to tear away the layers of conformity and to truly find myself. I want to live deliberately. I am a dreamer, wandering through life, always riding the time machines we call memories and dreams. I am a writer. I write to give myself a place to be alone with myself and my thoughts, and hide from the cruel reality of the world. I write for the absolute knowledge and complete certainty that every word that drips from the end of my pencil onto the blank paper is totally, irrevocably, and in every way possible, mine. I am an actress, the world is my stage, the curtain never closes. I am a musician, giving voice to the silent and wings to the soul. When the world is like a cage around me, music melts the bars to smoke. Writing tears them away like paper. Acting pulls them to the ground. Dreaming snatches you from their clutches, bringing you to the moon and back on wings of white if you wanted. To be all those things, is to be truly free. To be all those things is to be me.

I am a writer, writing my flaws down on paper, to see them, understand, fix them. I am writing to fix what’s broken. I am writing because I am a hypocrite. I throw stones, yet peer through my own glass walls, hoping they do not shatter from the shower of my own pebbles. I scatter thorns like roses, but forget that my own feet are no more than bare skin and soon all will be red as petals. I am writing because I don’t think before I speak. I shout out, throw rocks, drop flowers. I am writing because I gossip. Rumors spread like vines from my lips, pulling people into their snare and entangling their helpless victims. But I shy from the vines that loop my own ankles, kicking them away, brushing them aside. I am writing because I’m a liar. I try to tell truths letting them escape from my lips like butterflies, but sometimes a moth drops from my mouth, an alien in the ranks of the butterflies. I am writing because I procrastinate. I push important things into the gloomy corners of my mind, and pull fun from the clutter, leaving my work to gather dust. I am writing because I’m lazy. I’m like a twig on the ground, unable to be stirred except by the strongest and most persistent of winds. I’m writing because I’m vain. I use others as a mirror, to see if I’m better, if I measure up. I write to see my flaws laid out before me, so that I can fix them and be a better person. If I pour my flaws upon paper, maybe I can begin to change them. But then I wonder, do I really want to change them? Without my flaws, who would I really be? I would be “perfect” but why would I want that? Some of the best and most interesting people are the ones who know and love their faults. So that is what I will do. I will embrace my flaws, pull them to me, refuse to give them up, because they are a part of me, and without them, there would be no me. I wish to be exactly as I am now, with every flaw and imperfection, because that is who I am, and that is perfectly fine with me, to be perfectly imperfect. I realize now that I’m not writing to fix something, because there is nothing that broken, but rather I’m writing to realize who I am and to understand myself. That is why I write.