Telling myself stories
To tell the story of your life would take another life of equal length. There is no such thing as a true story because every story, to be told, must leave out something. And every something left out matters. It’s all the somethings that lead us to one point and then another; it’s all the somethings that merge into reality; it’s all the somethings , subconscious and conscious, that make up our experience. I can tell you a story, I can tell you my stories, I can tell you many versions of many moments of many stories of my life, and still: No one will ever know the life I live. And no one will ever know the life you live. This is true. I am a child. Alive in a loving family. Growing up in a small Mississippi town, 1980s edition. I am: Unsure, voracious, timid, curious, wild. I keep my wildness locked up in a small box, shelved in my heart’s interior room. I memorize courtesies. I swallow down rules. I want to be good. I want to be good. I want to be good. I ask questions using polite words and careful tones. I learn that some questions cannot be asked even this way. I am loved, I am safe, and I am trying very hard to push the shape of myself into the slots around me. None of them fit. I try harder. I find ways to trim off those awkward bits of self, to unwind and tuck down those sideways curling threads of self, to starve thin into skeletal compliance those juicy curves of self. I am a child and I learn to read early and I eat books like snacks. When all the feelings choke off my air, books help me breathe. I move swiftly, with determination, like I have a purpose, through the children’s section of our small town library. The picture books. The rhyming books. The early chapter books. Gulp them down. I cruise onward to the teen section. It’s small. I dive headlong into the adult section. My mother, so careful in all other ways, so conscious of what might hurt me or bring me to some truth I should not face, never thinks that books hold danger. I read without limits, without reservation, without pause. And I discover: lives I had not dreamed of, and cannot know, fully, ever. Here, in stories tucked away on a shelf, is enough to teach a girl in the southern United States a small but essential truth of what it is to be a thousand other things, to live a thousand other lives. I step into the larger world. I am a queen, I am a prostitute, I am shipwrecked, I am starving, I am fighting a war, I am tending a field, I am an ecstatic nun, I am a murderer, I am I am I am I am I am I am until the last page turns and I wake up in my own room, disoriented. Myself, but more than myself. Myself, but larger, a little louder, unfurling, fattening up. None of these stories are complete. Most are not even factual. And yet: They are true. I am an adult. I have within me a picture of what this means and I try to live up to it. It is an odd thing to be. I have responsibilities. I make decisions, so many decisions. I am still unsure, voracious, curious, wild. Less timid, now. I do not knock on doors and wait, polite. I push them open. I walk in. I look around and decide if it is a space I want to be in. Then I stay or I go. I still want to be good, but I have learned I get to define it for myself. I am unlearning domestication. I am telling myself stories. They are true because I make them true.
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