I Read That I Should Post a Bio as an Emerging Writer on Medium

So I’m going to go ahead and write one.

Misty was born when I was about ten years old. Moon isn’t her maiden name; that came much later. I was playing in my room, imagining that I would one day write a riveting publication called Virginia Underground, and I would write as Misty.

I have kept a journal on and off since I was seven years old, but Misty wasn’t behind the writing when I was so young. She emerged, full of strength and conviction, when I was about sixteen — when I became very involved in the church, started dating the Cowboy, and pushed Snake away because he wasn’t a Christian.

Misty had a lot of time back then. She would spend her mornings on the school bus, the year after M moved away, doing her first Bible study of the day. The in-depth one.

Misty liked school, too. But when the Cowboy left, Misty retreated deep within me, taking her vibrancy with her; and the hollow person that was left pushed everyone away.

Her voice grew dark, her writings reflective and sad. She wrote to the Cowboy every night for several months and kept the last bouquet of white roses he had given her until there was nothing left of them but brown paper.

In desperation one night, she tried to burn the thick stack of letters, but they wouldn’t light; it was too damp in my basement room in December. She cut them up, all of them, into tiny little pieces and then stuffed them in the vase with the dead roses.

Misty started to creep out again about a year later. She sat in the foyer of Coldwater Community Church and looked up, out the glass windows at the front and into the parking lot. That red truck was never coming back, she suddenly realized with startling clarity. It was time to move on.

Misty came back out slowly, a little bit at a time. She didn’t have a warm reception by a lot of the people she had once thought of as friends, but there were still a few. W. The Roman. Snake.

The more Misty let herself come out, the less compulsive the need to write. I would still write all the time, of course; I even still did my Bible studies, although with not quite the enthusiasm and zeal I had once had.

But Misty spoke too much. She used her voice, and it ended poorly, so she retreated again.

But she didn’t leave me hollow this time. I couldn’t stand the desolation of that. Instead, she left me with Bradley. He liked to drink. He wanted to smoke full-flavor Camels, no less (That didn’t last long, though; I went to Camel No. 9 menthols pretty quick.)

Bradley also wasn’t particularly into dudes, either. My intense attraction to Snake seemed somehow dampened as if it were a song muffled behind the thickness of padded walls. Still there, but easier to ignore.

I moved in with M; her father, Pastor Liberal, and her mother; and her three younger siblings. I tried to be involved with Pastor Liberal’s church, but it was like that phase of my life was over and I was still clinging to its shredded remains. I have always had a hard time letting go.

The Roman asked me to marry him. He was bisexual and seemed to get along fine with the part of me that was Bradley. I had known him since I was 13; I had gone on my very first date with the Roman, dressed up in my brand new Baby Phat shirt for the occasion with my mother acting as chaperone. He was cocky and judged people’s worth by their intelligence, but he was safe. I agreed to marry him.

Then I met Atlas. He was M’s boyfriend’s older brother, and it just lined up too perfectly that my best friend and I should end up with brothers. I callously dumped the Roman and promptly started dating this guy who thought I was a boy the first time he saw me.

Misty hid. She was buried so deeply within myself that I stopped writing; I picked up a pen only to copy the chords for a song I wanted to learn. And entombed with her was the rawness of my emotions, cut open and rubbed with salt one too many times.

All this time, Snake was there. He came over to party on the weekends when I went back home, even when I started bringing Atlas with me. His cognitive dissonance, his chaos, and his disorder were almost palpable at this point in time. Where I had frozen up within myself, he was bleeding hot lava wherever he went.

I could have taken him in my arms and maybe eased the bleeding a little, maybe tamed the viciousness of the metronome just a touch, but I didn’t. I looked at him, and because I couldn’t bear to give him the chance to leave me and hurt me, I felt nothing.

Misty had found her place, locked safely away in the deepest parts of my subconscious, and it would be another decade before she started screaming for somebody to let her out.

The story continues: