This might be easier if I were a recovering alcoholic. Under those circumstances, proof of evolution would be simple as a number of days sober, designated by a 0.00 BAC or a booze-free apartment or bank statements void of transactions at the local bar. Then again, you can never tell the difference between a recovering alcoholic who is clean for life and one who is about to fall off the bandwagon.

What I am about to make a case for is my evolution as a writer. Unfortunately, the best way I can articulate my understanding of that evolution is to say that the writer is a person entirely foreign to the author, meaning that I the voice I command on paper is different, if nothing else, than the one I identify with myself. I have been challenged persuade you of this very dichotomy by writing about my writing and by using samples of my past writing to convey the evolution I’ve identified, which is that my writing has been consistently the confident in contrast with my low-esteem self. Further, I have very little evidence of the disjoint I encounter when I experience my own writing, especially when this argument must be made through the medium I am discussing. So you can see how I have run into a bit of a conundrum. This is a particular problem because I consider myself a highly capable writer of argument.

Suffice to say my resolution to this prompt is not sufficient, but I will provide a disclaimer in hopes that you will take my word for it: I cannot use writing to prove that my identity as a writer is an anti-me. I can only show you pieces of my writing that will exemplify what I consider to be effortlessly strong, casually compelling and what have you. I have long since understood that an artful concession can become a writer’s greatest arguing tactic, that the credibility he or she teases out in the articulation of counterargument is the golden ticket. So, here goes nothing. I encourage you to interview me, if you are not persuaded.  

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If I were to see myself in a crowd of people walking down the street, I don’t know if I would recognize myself. I mean, I don’t know who I would be looking for. My hope is that, if we were to bump into one another, I would think that person is prettier than I had expected. That she is well put together and has a nonchalant, confident air about her. She’d whip out a funny joke to summarize our encounter and I would be jealous of her. But another part of me fears that she’d be chunky, I’d be able to see her pores or wonder why she’s wearing that outfit. She’d stutter when our shoulders brushed or even spill her coffee. I’d be embarrassed for this person.

What I am trying to describe, perhaps ineloquently, is a state that is hovers somewhere around self loathing, a constant mental appraisal of my self worth. It is a flaw of my psyche that manifests itself in nearly every aspect of my life. It is confusion, even to me as I try to put it into words. I am, for example, afraid of mirrors. In shiny department stores or passing storefront windows on sunny days, I turn my head purposefully away from the potential reflection, lest I expose myself to, well, myself. To sneak a peak would ruin my day, but sometimes I do it anyway. Other times, mostly in the privacy of my own home, I stare at the person whose image is projected back to me and think “she’s okay.” I convince myself that, if that’s the girl other people see, it’s not so crazy said people want to be around her. This is to say nothing of pictures, in which I have never been able to reconcile the seemingly distorted image I see on the screen with my expectations of it. I am somewhere between “I don’t know” and “I don’t want to know.” And this is not, to be clear, an assessment of photogenic-ness. It is a genuine question of self recognition.

That’s why when, during a writing workshop just weeks ago, my partner expressed her reactions to my first draft, her words were both chillingly clarifying and utterly confusing. She had read my piece about dismal self confidence and the way it prevents me from actualizing the changes I would like to see in the various aspects of my life. She was a bit confused, not by the writing but by the writer. She had met me for a brief moment just days earlier, saying that when she met me, she thought I was someone who had her “shit together” and said “I wanted to be like you.” To which I thought, who the hell would want to be like me, but nodded my head in agreement and started typing. To her, the writer and the person sitting before her were two wholly different persons.

That was the story I needed to tell.

You see, if I were to read a book written by Erin Lennon, I’m not sure I would believe I wrote it. That’s because I don’t recognize myself on paper, either. I have a difficult time reconciling the identity of the writer I read with the person I am today. Thus, the evolution of my writing tells me less about the changing writer than it does the ego-erasing pain I deal with in all other facets of my life. The person reflected back to me in my writing is, like that person in the picture, a stranger. The difference, though, is that the writer of my work is the person I had hoped to see. She is prettier than I had expected. She has a nonchalant air about her. She has plenty of jokes to summarize our awkward encounters.

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I was lying in a hospital bed with a metal plate in my left hip when a team of endocrinologists dropped by to schedule me for more tests and gather more information about my case. They listed off their initial theories: You are not producing any estrogen, so your bones are vitamin deficient. Read: You are not a woman, you cannot have children. Your bones are brittle, you have osteoporosis. Read: You’re not 21, you have the body of an old woman. Your bones were at one time deprived of nutrients because of an eating disorder. Read: You did this to yourself.

Imagine those same doctors ask, concluding based on your current proportions that you are not currently suffering from this particular disease, if you’ve ever had an eating disorder. They’re serious, though it seems like they’re mocking you — do I look like I have an eating disorder? Imagine now that you secretly wish the answer was yes, partly because you’d like an explanation for why you’ve run yourself into three unique stress fractures in both hips, partly because you think that if you in fact did have an eating disorder, you wouldn’t have needed to run in the first place. And in that hospital bed you have plenty of time to reflect on the Special K-in-a-Ziplock diet from middle school. And you can’t remember if you have a disorder.

Maybe it was the anesthesia, but I was baffled. This girl. These problems. This wasn’t me. 

When I look back at my writing from that time, I find no evidence of a girl who was sequestered in an apartment high above Ann Arbor, who couldn’t eat or do anything much but sleep, who called her parents every day out of self pity. In my writing there is no neediness, no depression. Instead, my writing is that of a straight-A student.

At the time, I was taking an upper-level writing course on the history of the Acropolis in Athens, a topic that was entirely foreign to me before my enrollment. Our final assignment was to analyze the novel Why I Killed My Best Friend, to choose a scene and argue its significance for the debate over the Acropolis as it belongs to Greek and World heritage. If I’m honest, I never read the book in the first place, instead jumping from scene to scene in search of a line that spoke to me. Then, in 600 words, I created what my teacher called “a tour de force, showing your complexity as a thinker and versatility as a writer. It amazes me how much you have packed into a short paper. You've given me insights in the novel that I missed.”

Parallelism between the Lascaux cave and Athens is rooted in their real-world classification as historical sites. Both the Lascaux cave and the Acropolis — named UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1979 and 1986, respectively — are preservations of an ancient past from which the international community attributes its modern successes. In the novel, the cave is Athens. Lascaux was made a tourist site seen by more than one thousand visitors a day and, by virtue of the exposure to foreign substances, the cave drawings deteriorated despite efforts to preserve them 

She is right. I am impressed, though as I read through, the response is much less about the content than they are the author. I trace the white scar on my right index finger and remember how it is merely a fraction of the size of the one on left thigh. My essay, the way each sentence was full of meaning and is eloquently strung to the next, reads of someone who is not broken. This person has compartmentalized, gotten her stuff together and done so with grace. This person is not trapped.

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As I write this supposed-to-be argument for the evolution of myself as a writer, I can’t help but think of myself as a dime a dozen. Don’t all writers adopt or project a different identity through their writing. After all, wasn’t Ernest Hemingway schizophrenic or something? I mean, a funny person is not by default a funny writer. Or vice versa. To a certain extent, it seems the totally of a person’s writing, the unique style and voice, forms an entirely different identity than the person behind those words. In theory.

Then again, the prompt for this writing was not “prove to you are a writer,” but rather “show me how you have changed as a writer.” And as I sit here frustrated, attempting to identify a change that I can argue for, I have no answer other than to say I — and by “I” I mean the myself as a writer — haven’t changed. That’s not a cop out so much as it is an admission: in writing, I have an alter ego. A utopian self. In writing, I have a voice that does not stutter or shrink away from ambiguity. My identity as a writer has not evolved in parallel with me as a person, but exists despite it. It has been the clarifying, centering point. Writing is the way by which I communicate the nuances of my thought, build swift, compelling arguments that I would shy away from in conversation. It is all the evidence I need when I say “I can write it better than I can say it.” Almost 22, jobless and desperate, I’ve always told myself that if I could scribble my answers to interview questions, even if given the same amount of time, I would have been hired in September. There is no nerve-induced wavering in my writing.

During brief moments where I do look in that mirror that is my writing, I am consistently confused to know that I authored my own work, but even more than that, I am impressed. Even envious. To be clear, I know that one single person wrote each and every piece. This writer’s voice shines through in every piece I’ve read, even as I go back in time. I just can’t believe that writer is me.

The voice is in my favorite daily article, the one I wrote about the direction of a hockey program I had never seen skate before. It was my first column, titled “The apology season.” 

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This is an entirely new team. More than a quarter of the roster is new to Michigan hockey. But unlike those of Michigan’s past, this team doesn’t need a definition. It was provided with one the moment the lights in Yost were shut off last season. Like the poster in the locker room — the one that commands Michigan to “win the next game” —  this identity is a direct reaction to the failures of 2012, where Michigan didn’t make the post-season.

Call it a knee-jerk reaction. Call it an apology.

The voice that dares to insert the author into academia when discussing dullest of organizational theories. 

From the bottom up, it is perhaps easiest to consider organizational behavior given the lessons of social networking theory. Transaction cost economics negates the importance of relationship in the weighing of utility, implying that relationships live outside of economics. In this assessment of economic approach, I, as student who did not fare so well in Econ 101, have argued social networking theory’s due diligence to relationships and their place in a utilitarian market is most inclusive. It seems there are two equally strong, juxtaposing forces operating in decision making, and that social networking theory’s acknowledgement of their overlap allows us to function as utility-seeking individuals in accordance with social norms and pressures. 

Perhaps, if nothing more, evolution is in this piece. In the reflection and the recognition of a desire to synchronize the writer with the person. Because the struggle is for symmetry and honesty above critique. Because an inability to articulate an argument for the first time becomes evidence for the evolution of self and writer simultaneously.

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One day, a boy in my 5th grade class told me the three girls I had befriended during my first months as a public school student in Madison, NJ, hated me. The word hate was so sharp off his lips, leaving me in dizzy state of confusion — what had I done wrong? There was a moment of panic, a deep breath, Christmas break where I spent my time hoping the girls would forget how to hate, then constant. Agony when the teacher asked us to partner up with a classmate, fear when I knew the answer to a question, anxiety at lunch and in gym class, tears at home. It was constant until it wasn’t.

Of course, that isn’t the whole story, which I’ve tried to write so many times in so many ways, formally and informally. I find, even as I write attempt the summary, I do not recognize the words in front of me as doing justice to the vague but sour memories I associate with them. Each time I have tried, there’s been an element of honesty missing or the words to capture the pain and fear and anxiety associated with the experience.

Anyway, I’ve always pegged fifth grade as the reason for “why I write.” At the time, I wrote because it was the space where my voice was the loudest. I began adopting the flare I saw in the books we read and mimicking my teachers’ communication styles: “in this way,” “thus” “through which,” “Therefore.” Soon, I had my own style that far and away exceeded the other kids in class. And I knew it. It made up for the fact that I hated reading and rarely saw a research assignment through. I argued artfully with little evidence, broke away from the five paragraph form prematurely. My writing spoke for me — my personality, my intelligence, my future. Between that school year and my freshman year of college, the feedback was much the same. “You have such a clear, commanding voice and that’s hard to do for young writers.”

The story was the college essay that got me admitted to the University of Michigan without anyone reading it beside the admissions counselor and myself. In it, I sped through the detail of my experience to bridge into my resume, the reason my story would mean something to Michigan or Syracuse or Northwestern —  “During those months when I could not speak up, I clung to reading and writing. I still do.” I expressed my desire to pursue a career in journalism, which makes me laugh because hell if you don’t have to talk more than you write in that profession. From the lead, it was clear I was out for tears, which is something I’ve held dear since before my teachers told us to think more creatively than the funnel introduction. A recruiter spends six seconds on your resume, a reader gives you a sentence.

I was lying. At the time I was bullied, though, I didn’t have any words at all, just months of silence. I didn’t write and pretty sure I furthered that lie just two paragraphs ago. I didn’t throw myself into writing as an escape, I simply knew it as my strength, the one thing I had going for me even during my bullying.  I lied, but a part of me thinks that it wasn’t a lie at all — if the writer of this piece would have never let herself do anything but chronicle her experience.

Four years later, my story was the Why I Write piece for my Minor in Writing gateway course; a series of journal entries in an attempt to capture essence of being your average bullied fifth grader. It was the show-not-tell model that I thought would serve my experience more genuinely. I played the same tune even then, introducing my piece in the following way by saying: 

I found, seven years later (after my college essay), that there simply and ironically weren't the words to express the agony that forced me to writing. I had the facts, the moments and memories, that had yet to be written down either, so I decided to write down the evidence as a means of investigation. I've found that these scenes are closer, that showing and not telling is the way I cope, the way I share with everyone else.

Still, the experience of rereading that my “Why I Write” is perhaps more telling than content itself. As I look through the portfolio for the first time since hitting submit — pondering why the hell the final version of my essay has edit marks in it — it is as if I am experiencing my writing for the first time. In its vivid, purposeful detail and its subsequent but well-intentioned dishonesty, I see a girl that put the pieces back together, who became all the more confident because of the experience. This is the woman who compartmentalizes well. Perhaps she is an advocate for children who have been bullied. She is invited to speak at conferences condemning bullying and lifting up survivors. I certainly never did any of that. It is an experience that makes me envious of that self — I wish I owned the voice I command in my writing.

The writer is a stronger, more confident, eloquent woman who is self-critical and smart and persuasive. She is honest with herself and others. She doesn’t get flustered or shaky or needy in the ways I do. She recognizes herself on the street and gives herself a warm hello. She does not shy away from mirrors.

I told you it would be easier if I were an alcoholic.