Cont. A fuzzy image and a feeling(?)

I am not yet the author I imagined becoming.

My author publication list is exactly one: the Salt Lake Tribune, which is something. After all, it was what sparked The Bouncy Brain. Most of my work has been published in empirical journals and epidemiological data reports. I’m so frustrated. Ever since I was a child and someone asked me what my ‘dream job’ would be—money aside or whatever—I always said: author, writer, philosopher, artist. Anything creative.

I took on too much responsibility too quickly growing up, unintentionally swallowing up the family system and instating myself as the Executive Director. My role was not one that others actively pursued; it sat vacant for nearly a decade. My duties involved looking after my two younger brothers, cooking and cleaning, getting straight As in school, staying out of trouble, and taking my daily dose of Parentification. This position did not leave much room for much else, including myself. So, I had to intentionally carve out a dedicated room in my mind.

When my family went to sleep, I’d lie my jet-lagged brain atop my pillow, clasp my eyes shut, and pretend to drift asleep when my parents came to say goodnight. Once I heard their door shut, I would secretly stay up until 4 or 5 A.M. ... just consuming art.

I was devoted to watching foreign films—many of which were French, German, and Spanish—obsessed with their cinematography, composition, and the complex narratives that I felt were lacking in American films.

Also, I’d conduct Night Writing—a roundtrip through my most associative musings. About what? Whatever came out. I was in (what I call) my writing fugue state—a flow where I’m completely unaware of meaning as letters form words form sentences bursting from my fingers. In my childhood bedroom, a tiny lamp sat next to my tiny bed, illuminating a butterscotch aura around my body. My bed was up against the one window in the room, cracked open to let the crisp midnight air rejuvenate my lungs, typing as easily as I consumed the air.

I grew up in a rural north Georgia town, with only one stoplight at the one high school. For much of my adolescence, I hated living there—for many reasons—but I see, now, how living in small towns, for girls with big dreams, is the best thing that could have happened to me.

When I was in high school, I did not fit in with my peers; I was never really there to adequately try, though. In fact, I was closer with the art teacher, Ms. Towery, my English teachers—especially Mr. Geren—and the school librarian, Ms. Moss. When not absorbed in discussions of classic English literature or avant-garde art movements, I resided in the bedroom built in my head. I had a “rich inner world”; I embarked on visceral daydreams about being born in a different era, as I was an alien to my generation.

As someone who grew up with modest means, I didn’t have the opportunity to venture outside of my small town. Yet, I had traveled the world in my expansive inner universe. I was sitting outside Café de Flore, engaged in electrifying discourse among the most prominent intellectuals. I ordered a cappuccino, while Sartre ordered an espresso, which became many, many espressos, until De Beauvoir arrived with Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and brought bourbon. I did not drink, as I had never drunk, and the intellectual veracity did not dim or slip. Before I knew it, it was 2 A.M. in Paris; still a buoyant city. While I admired the city’s candor and commitment to living, I, however, got both—on a sleepy voyage across hemispheres and back.

After high school, I started undergrad in Atlanta; a culture shock of change. My parents—the immigrant South Asian parents they are—explicitly said that I was to major in pre-med and become a medical doctor. That lasted until the day I cried for the entire hour-and-15-minute drive home from organic chemistry lab. And I know myself. So, I secretly switched my major to English, at first a creative writing concentration, but then my parents’ voices got into my head about wanting more for me—”secure, stable, respectable jobs”—and I switched my concentration to journalism.

I was a journalism major for an entire year until... my childhood friend, Anneliese, said something that really shook me. We were having lunch at a Japanese-Mexican fusion restaurant (nearly 8 years later I still remember this restaurant) and she said, “Do you really want to write stories online about the Kardashians or whatever dumb cultural moment is at the time? You would be way better as a therapist.”

Noted, she did have a point—after all, I am now getting my Masters in Social Work, on my path to becoming a clinician. Yet, I had not correlated journalism = meaningless/noise journalism until that moment. Of course, I know now that I could have picked the trajectory of my journalism career, could have avoided writing articles about peptides or whatever.

At age 21, though, this really scared me. I did not switch my major several times only to write articles about things that stunt my creative growth. Despite much of my duress, I did take a poetry and fiction writing course, and that semester was the most glorious moment of unadulterated contentment and vigor for cultivating my writing skills.

Eventually, psychology and philosophy became my major. Since then, my dedication to science and research stood alongside my, now, otherworldly pursuits of becoming an author—or, more precisely, an intellectual. I do not have degrees in the arts. I have degrees in science. While I love research, science, data, clinical work, I was an artist first. And I am sick of that person being second.

My rich inner world still comes out of hiding, though. Every now and then, that girl with big dreams drifts back through my universe, and sometimes leaves a special memento that becomes art that I, Joy today, have created.

There is real grief in not frequently embarking on a dreamy red-eye to Flore. It wasn’t a vacation from the very debilitating responsibilities in my teenage life—it was a carefully crafted home. I could never perform masking; after trying “fit in” for approximately two years in my adolescence, I was just as quick to change course as I was in organic chemistry. Instead of announcing my Alien Otherness, I learned to make it disappear. I reached for the master’s tools—not to dismantle the house, but to disappear inside it. I played the game of Life, while world-building in secret. Only recently, I have realized there was a major cost in that.

I have this yearning for belonging, or “finding my people.” I might think I’d find them enclosed in ivy-covered universities, or tucked in between aisles of novels. However, I feel even this would be challenging. Typical spaces where one seeks out said people—intellectuals, bookish folk—would be academia, libraries, book clubs, creative writing groups, cafes, or niche corners of the internet. Yet, I... don’t feel like I truly connect with anyone in these spaces. I never really fit an “aesthetic”—or felt drawn to one because of what it represents; it feels constricting and reductive. Likewise, seeking community through shared interests feels like its own kind of aesthetic—limiting, constricting.

I am not sure who my people are, where they would be, or what our time together would look like.

All I really have is a fuzzy image and a feeling.

She’s on her way.

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2026-07-07-1732