There’s something seductive about the blank page. It’s more than just the crisp wink it gives me as my pen hovers over the page, hesitating to make the first mark. It’s this beauty of the naked page. It is exposed and vulnerable, it has no one else but me. There’s this intimacy that comes with the comfort of knowing that I am facing it the same way. Exposed, vulnerable, and down to no one but these pages bound together to keep my thoughts spiraled together before they spiral out of my control.

It’s the kind of thing that makes me fall in love with a blank page over and over again. I catch myself doing this every time I pick up yet another notebook that I’ll probably discard to the side when I’m no longer in need of its therapy or consul, or out of guilt for my infidelity when I actually have my usual notebook on my person. I’m kind of what one would call a Notebook Whore, I suppose.

Okay, no suppositions. I am a Notebook Whore.

I pace in the stationary aisle, calling to my mind pictures of my battered, but loyal notebook that allows me to scratch up its insides everyday. It sits at home, waiting for me and my cup of coffee well into the night. But there’s this idea has infiltrated my mind, see, and I don’t have my loyal pal by my side. The Muse seduces me into picking up these new notebooks one by one. I leaf through their pages, making sure their margins aren’t too big and their lines are ruled just so. I run my hand over the covers until I find one or two or seven notebooks that please me. Then I favor a couple of them, I hold them in a way that hints this to them but not the others, but I make sure to check all their prices— the pretentious starving artist must always think economically, of course.

I return the most expensive notebooks back to their respective shelves, but it does hurt. I wish they could know that. 

And then I am down to four. I contemplate buying all of them and before I can argue with the excited Muse whose ego has inflated with the thought of all that blank paper devoted to it, I am halfway down aisle before I feel the change in my breast pocket give me a cautionary clink. I slow down and impulsively return the underdog I wanted to root for, but instinctively know wasn’t going to make it.

The Final Cut. It’s kind of like the last three contestants on that cheesy Karaoke show you’ll never admit you used to watch— you can’t choose who will move on to the final round and you insist it over and over to anyone who will listen, but really… you know who will survive. Admit it.

And so I do, in the form of returning the third wheel back to it’s spoke upon the shelf. I grimace and give one last glance behind me as I walk away. Like a bandaid.

Despite my dramatization above, the last two is always the hardest. I have to glance around to be sure that no one walks by me while I am in this emotional state. I want It to understand. I didn’t mean for all this teasing, this built up excitement for the potential, for the promise of friendship and emotional catharsis and all that we would create. We had been through so much already… no. I can’t do this. It is unjust. Unfair. Redundant. Yet… in the other hand, I hold College Ruled. I need that kind of order

that boundary in my line so I can feel the heat of the challenge to break it. Wide Ruled can’t give me that. It allows too much comfort; there is no challenge. There is the frustration of being babied. Wide Ruled lines are like training wheels, made to slow me down when all I want to do is keep up with my thoughts (or let’s be real, at least be able to see the dust they kick up as they sprint ahead of me.)

So with a heavy heart, the last notebook to hit the shelf is usually the first one I court. I leave the scene quietly. Nothing can be said. There is too much pain. Well, that and, I like to think that I still have some grip on normal social behavior, and talking to/forming relationships with inanimate objects— while we all know we do it— is not something you wanted to be walked in on by a stranger.

Especially if the stranger happens to be attractive. Which is exactly what happens as I turn around and spot him smirking at me. I realize he has observed this entire torrid affair. There is awkward silence, because why wouldn’t there be? I smile sheepishly and make my getaway in haste. At times, talking to notebooks can be easier than talking to people.

I really need to buy less notebooks.