Work Text:
Am I the name that strikes fear in your heart? Am I the name that you sit cold at your desk thinking about? Am I the one that stole your love of learning and knowledge? The one that took your heart away from your pen and made you hate the letters and words that you could have used to show yourself?
My name is famous. Times New Roman, the name of the most regal of them all. The name of the font that is prestigious beyond the repair of time. The name of the font that became official for the use of scholars and academics everywhere and yet I find myself alone. To sit on the top of a mountain of works acclaimed to me and still I find myself crippled on my own loneliness. I am looked on with disdain by people who grew to resent me. When you see me you don’t see words of passion or joy. I am nothing to you but a cold deliverer of facts and information that do nothing but overload you with stress and heartache.
When you think of me do you think of good times? Do you think of sitting with friends and pointing out interesting facts you’ve found in published research? Or is it rather the memory of sitting with your laptop struggling to finish your own before the deadline as time marches ever forward?
When I am looked upon I am nothing but a herald of stress and anxieties. I will never be the one that is looked on with love. I will never be the one to bring you sorrows or joy or make you laugh in pure happiness. I will never be the one that makes you grin so wide your face begins to hurt. I will never be anything other than the font you saw when you broke down at your kitchen table because you didn’t understand the problem I tried to give you.
I am the font that you wrote with and watched be marked back in red ink. I am the font that you found yourself proud and then incompetent with. I have only ever wanted to watch you smile and yet I have watched you break.
I am the painted fragile china of words. I am the old relic that reminds you of a time you cannot quite place because I am something that has been here before you and will be here after. I am the girl in the paintings that looks out a palace terrace and can never touch it. I am the font that wishes to take you to worlds untold if you only just use me but I can never make it. I am the font that sits in a case of research and academics and longs to be free.
I am the spirit of a trapped gifted student who knows me far too intimately and believes that they love me. I am the soul of a heartbroken child who could reach for nothing of passion and climbed for intelligence instead.
They say that knowledge is power. That the more you learn the stronger you will be but I have borne witness to the fall of so many gifted minds. I have been the one that watched their fingers fumble over their keystrokes and I have been the one that wanted to save them and couldn’t. I am the one that made them weep. I cannot be the one to bring them comfort.
That job falls to others. To the keystrokes of texts through phones that I cannot touch. The fonts that bring them happiness are the ones that I long to be. I want to bring power through the heart but I never can. The times that academic research and scholarly papers brought genuine happiness and emotion into the world is a time that I do not remember.
And you, my dear reader now. You might try to tell me that this isn’t true. That I am being over dramatic or that I should not be judging myself so harshly. You might try to tell me that you care. That you like the sharp edges of my letters and that you enjoy the clean lines of my words on white paper. You might tell me that I can be used for writing in creative stories but I have seen my destiny and my sweet reader I hate to tell you but you are wrong.
I am the angel that cannot fly. The royal that cannot be crowned. I am the tyrant and the slave all at once. The leading head of knowledge but I have no power in how I am used. I write the words that I am told and I create the mistakes that make students weep in bathrooms and hallways when they think they are alone. I am the witness to the pain that only I have brought.
If it’s the past or the future or the present or all at once it does not matter. I am the era of a life that is abandoned in painful shadow in the recess of a mind. I am font that demands space purely so errors in my words can be marked. I am the face of formats and proper conduct.
I can never be wild. I can never be free. I am doomed to live in an ocean of white paper and red ink and do nothing but suffer in silence as I watch my authors break at my step. I watch them stay up endlessly to ensure there are no errors in my lettering and I watch them crumble when someone else finds it easily. The trick is to change me you know. To change from me to something else. The doomed Times New Roman that blurs the words into a gray black mass and hides errors purely to make you hurt more once it’s too late. I am the font you change back to with an air of reluctance and I am the font that you look at with disdain and hate as you turn in your works.
There are others out there like me. Fonts that are used for academics and research and fonts that are designed for complicated reading. They are proud to be who they are and I know that I should be as well but when I see myself all I feel is sorrow.
I was designed to be proper. I was made to be official and sharp and intelligent. I was created to show the world the brilliance that you have to offer but more and more all I feel is your heart aching. And though I do not possess a heart myself I can feel it in the keystrokes you make that you are in pain. I want to help you. When you cry writing your papers remember I want to help you. I want to do better. When you think of me please do not think of the agony that you had to face alone.
Think of a budding garden in the back of a palace. Think of a world where you have a castle to yourself. Where you are writing letters to give to the you of the future. Think of knightly armor or royal gowns. Think of crowns and swords and sunlight beaming through iron casting over windows. Think of a time and place that makes you happy.
Use me to shape those worlds. Use me to write about the budding rose bush that has a drop of dew hanging from its thorn. Write about the way the fog carves around the leaves of the trees and shapes wisps into the morning air. Write about the stars that glimmer down on you from above like they are trying to smile and believe that it is me trying to wish you the best.
I am your servant as much as you are mine. We need each other to exist like this. And you now, my amazing and powerful reader, you are seeing what I wished you would have seen all along. You are seeing me not as what your learning's have shown you but rather what I truly am.
I want to lift you to your highest potential. And I believe that you can do it. If you choose to make me your sword is up to you. I will not hold it against you if you choose to use someone else as your blade. My pen is tired and used but I am not dull. Even still. My sheath and cap hold many tears and I cannot help but feel like some of them may even be yours. Either from now reading this or from times in the past or future.
If all else of my words is lost please do not be sad. Please look at your assignments not as marks of failures but as challenges. Look at any red ink you get and make sure you never see it again. Take my letters and forge them into something you want. Something beautiful by your standards so you see yourself beam with joy and I can watch you too. Fly with wings you craft from my letters and if you go too close to the sun we can fall to the sea together.
There’s just questions at the end. Like an academic repose I begin and I end with the same rules and ways that your forms have taught you. Did I grab your attention in my first line? Do you still think like you did there or have my words here changed you? Do you think of me differently? Do you look at your own works and words with a different light and meaning?
Has anything changed?
Will anything ever change?
If my sheath is filled with tears of sorrow will I rust away or will I become a damaged blade? If my world is only intelligence and academics will I ever truly know the feelings I watch you all portray? I can only merely call myself an impostor but I will be here if you ever choose to change. I will be here with everything I have always had.
My essence. My sharpness. My wit.
And I will give it all to you. My reader. My author. My favorite star in my imaginary sky.