I’ve been reading too much Don Miller lately. I know this because I read his books while sitting up in bed, leaning forward. And leaning forward- no matter who is doing it- makes me nervous. Makes me feel like someone is about to bolt. I feel the same way about people who never take off their shoes. And then I end up tuning out everything they say so that I can hear my own thoughts repeating in my head “look, if you want to leave why don’t you just do it?”. But maybe they don’t want to leave and I just have abandonment issues.

I also know I’ve been reading too much Don Miller lately because I feel like telling all the bits of my life as if they’re charming details. Maybe because I want them to be charming details. Like the way I smell all of my clean clothes before I put them on because for the half a second or however long I allow myself to inhale, I close my eyes and flash back to doing laundry with my mom in the summer, in a house she rented on a street called Pine. I still buy the same laundry detergent because, for whatever reason, I like that memory.

Those are the things I want to write about. Because those are the things I want people to fall in love with about me. But no one wants to hear about how I smell my clothes, or how I wish I was the keeper of bookmarks because I want to be the keeper of books but I’m always losing bookmarks and it drives me crazy. No one wants to hear how I sometimes smell books too, because some of them smell like old pickles and it reminds me of the time I spent as a child with my cousins playing at our grandparents’ house. I don’t even think we had old pickles there so that memory barely makes sense.

I wish I had real things to write about. Things that were interesting and exciting and defining. I don’t want to make things up; I’ve never wanted to make things up. I want to write about things that are real and find a way to show everyone how beautiful the real and overlooked things are. Maybe that’s why I want to write about the details. Maybe it has nothing to do with Don Miller other than the fact that I love his details and I’m jealous that he finds a way to get other people to love his details too.

I think I might be insecure about my details. Probably because I’m insecure about my non-details. My big things, my visible, important, and shaping components. Because most of those parts aren’t charming and not too seldom does the devil convince me that I’m unlovable. That I’m a selfish, damaged, stubborn mule of a woman whose details are not redemptive. Whose details don’t pull enough weight to cover all the ugly with charming. But, lucky for me, the way I eat my bananas or the way I want to pet every animal I see isn’t suppose to redeem my selfishness. (It wouldn’t hurt if it detracted from it though). Nonetheless, I’m sure I’ll continue to desire that all my idiosyncrasies find a home in someone’s heart. And until then maybe I’ll just wrap them up in words, tie cutesie adverbs around them, and tell people they taste like fine chocolate.