It swallows me whole

I think that there's a certain beauty in handwriting--the way that everyone dots their i's and j's in their own order or has a unique way of constructing a k (by far the hardest one for me...) It's a most subtle movement that differentiates it into something that will always be your own creation, whether or not what's actually being written is original.

My handwriting looked like chicken scratch. Only a few months ago did I resolve to practice my penmanship whenever I had free time, mostly because I was determined to make it distinctly mine. Identifiable like my dad's all caps or enviable like my mom's elegant script. I ended up resurrecting cursive back from the third grade where the rest of the world left it. Who did I know that used it let alone could write a z with it?

So I took cursive and I wrote the living wits out of it. But I've realized that being able to look back on my notes in school was something of a necessity so, in no time at all, I've changed it again with a disturbingly low amount of difficulty.

It's unsettling because, among the many things you can learn about a person, I think there are three that say absolutely nothing and a whole lot of everything at the same time:

3. the shoes they are wearing

2. their favorite pizza toppings

and 1. their handwriting

I'm pretty confident about my boot collection, and I'm convinced that pepperoni, green peppers, and onions are the best pizza toppings in the known universe...but shoes and pizza have nothing on handwriting. I liken it unto a person's fingerprint; it is that telling and personal.

Because my handwriting is constantly changing, who's to say that I won't randomly develop a liking for Tom's or that I will no longer find pineapple and olives on pizza to be completely abhorrent?

Weeks ago, I loved the dark loops and density of my cursive, so why do I now prefer this wide and faint writing instead? From where have I pulled the patience that allows me to give each letter deliberate consideration?

I could be fooling myself because I'll always be cursive at heart... or maybe, even further back, I'm truly chicken scratch.

This handwriting might not even be me.

Maybe I don't have one particular style.

Maybe it's the change itself that says it all.

-rae

P.S.--Happy Valentine's Day! How lovely it'd be to see your handwriting on a love note.