Self-Portrait
By Carly Jo Bell
Midnight
I’m born on a Tuesday in December, 1994. The third child in my family, following two cocker spaniels who my parents used as practice. Each night I’m laid in a crib next to their bed, so my dad can carefully place his finger in my grip. Occasionally he wriggles it to make sure I respond. I always do.
1am
On a Sunday in September, 1998, I join my mom for my favorite activity: being happily drowned by the laundry she pulls from the dryer before it gets folded. Today I don’t get to do that though, because a butterfly appears as the dryer door opens. It flies; I’m entranced. Mom laughs as I chase it around the house, only capturing it on polaroid—eternal proof that a miracle happened.
2am
On a Thursday in June, 2002, I take my final walk down the steps from Mrs. Rhine’s class. It’s where I learned to use scissors, to love Jesus and others before myself, and to always be a pleasure to have in a classroom with three boys who never kept quiet.
3am
It’s a Monday in March, 2006, and I’m still eating lunch in the 5th grade section. Lorenzo and Tyler stayed back while my friends went to play. I wonder whether I like their attention.
4am
It’s my 15th birthday. We’re at Spaghetti Factory again, surrounded by familiar faces. It’s raining and I’m worried about eating too much bread.
5am
On September 6, 2013, I lay awake in my new dorm room. Excited to be here, now I must determine which Carly I’ll use to fit in.
6am
It’s a Tuesday in June, 2017. I’m leaning over the clay, hands pressed into it, learning that it can’t be centered if you haven’t found center yet.
7am
A Saturday morning in March 2021. Too early for beachgoers to have yet hit the sand. I hear Patches, purring, asleep on my bed. It dawns on me that not only am I on my own, I now have another being to protect.
8am
I turn 30 years old on a Friday in December. I’ve lived with my parents since I’ve been sick; two truths I still struggle to accept. I bake my own cake, because though mom promised, it’s easy to forget when one's own mom is freshly dead.
On a Wednesday in September, 2028, it’ll be 9am. I don’t know where I’ll be at 10 or 11 or even midnight again. For now, I’m not yet 34; my day is still only beginning.
Meet the Artist
I write so that I can understand myself, my experiences, and the world all of that exists within.
My life has been somewhat defined by an ongoing struggle to grasp what’s happening within and around me in real time. I now know this is neurodivergence and therefore something I can consciously accommodate, but many of my early years were spent working to hide this ‘deficit’ behind plastered-on smiles and an attempt at an easygoing, “up for anything” demeanor.
Meanwhile, in private, I read and I wrote. Reading—be it Pinterest quotes, Anaïs Nin journals, or Taylor Swift lyrics—gave me words for the multitude of experiences where I could tell that I missed something, but I didn’t know what. Writing is where I’d then regurgitate all of the jumbled blobs in my brain, making them ‘tangible’ by putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). All of which allowed me to then meticulously sort through and organize them until I finally comprehended what had happened and what I felt, wanted, or needed in response.
It was my third grade teacher, Mrs. Stacey, who first told me I could be a writer. Yet it wasn’t until I turned 31—and watched the first season of Heated Rivalry, a show where it seems like every person involved took their creativity seriously—that I decided to fulfill Mrs. Stacey’s prophecy.
Over the next eight months, I wrote a minimum of four first draft poems per day. Through many rounds of editing, these eventually became the first 30+ poems I’m now sharing on Instagram, on my website, and in my First & Final email series.
When I began planning to share my work publicly, I believed my motivation was to be seen accurately.
To give the reader everything I could about myself so that maybe someone would finally fully know me. The longer I wrote, the more I realized that the impossibility of that goal is the purpose of sharing my work. For no amount of detail, history, or insight will ever be able to fully overcome the other person’s biases, personal experiences, or beliefs.
It’s in recognizing this fact that we can finally just be free—free to play, to create, to live out the life we desire as the person we are at our core.
I will continue to use my poems to explore this freedom for myself. My hope is that in the shared space my poems create for you and I to connect—however brief a meeting—you will do the same.
Bios
50 words:
Carly Jo Bell (she/they) is a queer poet whose work explores what happens when inherited stories collide with who we each are at our core. Each poem is an invitation to immerse oneself in that friction while remaining compassionately curious about what truths it may hold. See more: carlyjobell.com
75 words:
Carly Jo Bell (she/they) is a queer poet and artist. Her work draws from psychology, ecology, mythology, and lived experience to ask what happens when inherited stories collide with who we each are at our core. Each poem is an invitation to consciously immerse oneself in that friction while remaining compassionately curious about what truths it may hold. See more: carlyjobell.com
150 words:
Carly Jo Bell (she/they) is a queer poet and artist. Her work draws from psychology, ecology, mythology, and lived experience to ask what happens when inherited stories collide with who we each are at our core. Each poem is an invitation to consciously immerse oneself in that friction while remaining compassionately curious about what truths it may hold.
Carly fell in love with poetry in eighth grade English class, initially frustrated by the strange combination of constraints and freedom inherent in free verse. The more she experimented, the more she discovered that poetry offered something she had been looking for all along: a way to make sense of experiences she could feel but could not yet name.
She shares her work through poetry performances, written and visual art, and First & Final, an ongoing email series documenting the journey from initial poetic fragment to finished work. See more at carlyjobell.com.
Social Media Links
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/by.carlyjobell