Empty Inside

I'm a little embarrassed to admit this.  I long to be known. I have about 7 or so retired diaries on my bookshelf at home.  Just sitting there.  Thank God my husband isn't the nosy type.  Although my feverish high school penmanship is better than any other security system I could come up with.  I mean everything was so noteworthy and pressing and teenager-y. My gooosh, how did I survive?! 

I have thought about tasking a girlfriend with getting my journals out of the house after I die.  She could add it to her private collection, pore over it every spare minute, call in sick to work, hanging on every word. Old school binge reading... or whatever.  

But I want more than that.  Not in some weird way, just in an everyday way.  The way I think everyone wants to be known. Over tea, on a car ride, email, text message.  No longer hidden in the fading ink of my journals. In my time in hospice, I quickly learned that people want a human receptacle for their stories.  We are full of them and we want them to be heard.  We want to tell them.  Isn't that why we post things on social media?  The pictures, confessions, dirty laundry (oh snap yes I said it), opinions, IG stories, food pics.  We want people to hear our thoughts, see our lives, KNOW us.  

When I'm being eulogized, I want my friends and family to nod knowingly because they've lived the stories with me or heard about them.  "Oh that Nia," they'll say.  "She'd want us to drink to this...and high five to that!" they'll exclaim.  "Certainly she'd say we should eat all the things and spend all the money, right?" And I would.  I would say that.  And, friends, I want to do the same for you.  

So tell your stories.  Hear others'.  Live on in the lives and stories of others. You are worth knowing.  A full life means dying on "E."