To tell stories is to live

Anna Loi

Anna (she/her) is a writer and storyteller originally from Italy and now based in Amsterdam. After her MA in Creative Writing from the University of Limerick, Ireland, she is now trying to finish her first novel. Curious about the strange human experience and people’s clumsy attempts at understanding themselves, she strives to be a voice that reflects those universal experiences of young women in the contemporary, withdrawn, messy, and confusing world. You can find some of

her work in magazines like Unapologetic Mag, Sonder Lit, and Sam Fifty-four, as well as anthologies like Moonlodge or Letters to Lovers zine.

To tell stories is to live

I.

I didn’t know what I was going to put myself through when I decided to write. I never knew how I did it – I wasn’t prepared for it.

For the blank page staring back at me. For all the times it felt like I was running out of words, for all the hours spent in front of my laptop trying to get it right. For people to have opinions about my work. For all of it to not matter, not even one bit.

II.

And nowadays I am so tired
so so tired
constantly exhausted
that I gave up,
I don’t write anymore. And the page
like everything else
has become a site of anxiety: a mirror to all my
failures.

III.

All lost lovers, all wasted opportunities, my internal turmoil, all that I’ve done wrong – I put down on the page and thought it was the only and absolute way to exist. I laid myself bare, without permission, without consent. I seem to forget that no matter how much tears and blood I put into my work, once it’s out into the world, it’s not mine anymore. So I let slip out many secrets I shouldn’t have. For years I read and wrote and dreamed of becoming an artist. And I had convinced myself that to be those things, I needed to be someone who is confident, political – a woman who has affairs.

Around me stacks of dishes and cups that I’m too lazy to wash up, full of liquid thoughts, filled during long sleepless nights spent staring inside myself, desperate to find something other than just void. Scribbles covering every inch of my desk, hanging proudly on the walls, floating in the air like homeless ideas. Too many open tabs, too many searches left unfinished, pieces of prose started but never not unfinished. Between me and the book I want to write, all my insecurities and struggles.

I need to get the job done, but I am not able to get it done because I’m thinking too much about getting it done. All I’m here for is to worry. About rent, bills, college fees, my stupid bike that’s always broken, the fact that I will never own a car, the bus that’s always late, groceries, food, or lack of it, the internet, war, climate crisis, my awful service job, and time.

That is never enough. I will never find the right time, the right space. I will never have the peace of mind. This anxiety is eating me alive. I will keep postponing, to when I feel better, to next week, to next month, to next year, while life quickly slips away from my fingers.

I hate it, actually. To sit at home alone all day in front of an empty Word document.
Tap, tap, tap. Type, type, type.
My stupid little posture and my stupid little stories. Insignificant, crushed by something bigger. A world that fascinates me and frightens me at the same time.