Ever since I was a little girl, I have had a fascination with the written word. I remember just looking at books, before I could even read more than the most simple of them, and I would put them to my nose and breathe them in. I would flip through the pictureless pages and wonder at what they contained.
Books, to me, were magic.
But it wasn’t just books. It was any words, really. Song lyrics. Quotes. Poetry. Well-phrased oral pronouncements.
From my earliest of memories, I can remember words making my heart flutter. I would have actual physical reactions to the sounds of words. I found beauty through their sounds, my truth in their meanings.
Words to me were magic and they were power. By merely manipulating the order of sounds and words, magic could be made. It was really that simple.
And also for as long as I can remember, I recall falling in love with certain pieces of writing. And I always fell in love for the same reason – recognition. If I could recognize in myself what the writer was discussing, if I could feel the humanity and the inevitability and the familiarity and the eternal in it, then I found love.
I found it anywhere from Love Story to Garth Brooks’s lyrics to the orations of Martin Luther King Jr.
To me, words have always been about creating bridges. Soul to soul, heart to heart. Words were about finding the common threads that connect us all.
I’ve always found certain works of fiction that I admire and love and enjoy, but it’s not where my heart has ever found its home. I love Margaret Mitchell and JM Coetzee and Khaled Hosseini. But for me, it’s the writing of Frank McCourt and Jeanette Walls and Anne Lamott that make me feel like there are kindred spirits out there in the world. My soul could rest in their words and know that I had found home.
And so I guess it makes sense that now that I write, I choose the personal essay over fiction. After all, fiction is a strange world to me. I admire it and I enjoy it and I respect it, but I don’t understand it from a writer’s perspective the way I do the memoir.
To me, it feels natural to sit down and write about myself and my world. To write about another sounds exhilarating but foreign.
And perhaps it stems from why I write. To be honest, I don’t write because I choose to. I write because I have to. This weird organ up in my head that keeps my body functioning becomes a strange and sordid place when it’s left to its own devices. I simply get to the point where there are so many words and ideas and thoughts in my head that I have to write. Because otherwise I will explode. Or implode. Probably whichever is messier and the most traumatic.
But write as I do, often and at length, I’ve never really considered myself a writer. Perhaps this sounds odd, but it makes perfect sense to me.
Writers hone their craft. Writers work hard. Writers have specific skills and talents and can draw out of others feelings so intense specifically because they are so familiar.
Writers are the chosen few. Writers make people’s hearts skip a beat. Writers are magic.
Me, I’m just a mom sitting on my couch at the end of the day purging all that has built up inside my head out onto the page in a haphazard and sometimes reckless manner.
Writing is rough for me, not because of the writing, but because of the sharing. I’ll hit “publish” and I panic. What did I share? Why did I share that? How could I have ever possibly have survived if I hadn’t shared it?
Writing is a craft and requires effort and revision and time. Surely that is not what I do. I wouldn’t have the time to really revise had I chosen to. And I couldn’t possibly spend the few moments I have writing revising. Then all the new thoughts would get backed up and everything up there would be bumping into each other creating a backlog and a mess and surely someone would get hurt in that process. Most likely me.
But as much as I have a hard time seeing myself as a writer, I really want to be a writer. I want to have that title and feel that title and feel myself worthy of that title.
But to that, my mind replies, “but who are you to self-proclaim?”
And it makes me wonder, who do we allow to define ourselves and what do we allow to determine what we will pursue?
Do we take the word of others? Or do we stand on our own authority? Do we trust in experts? The general populace? Our family?
And what risks are we willing to take? When do we know if the chance we want to take is one worth taking? If we are up for the challenge? If we are enough?
After all, I could declare myself to be a vocal artist. I have a voice. I can manipulate it to make sounds that kind of resemble a song. It might make windows crack and babies cry, but I have the physical ability to sing.
I sing but can’t consider myself a singer. So what right do I have to consider myself a writer merely because I write?
Or maybe the answer can’t even be found in that question. Perhaps I am not a singer because I choose to sing. I am a writer not because I choose to write but because I need to write. Perhaps we are what our souls need us to be.
So much in life seems to happen to us. We make some basic, key decisions and then a whole lot of life happens. If we aren’t careful, we can find ourselves trotting along day by day putting out fires and trying to catch some laughs in between.
But when we do this, we can forget about what it is that our secret dreams contain.
Inside all of us, I believe is art waiting to be lived. Whether it’s with words or pictures or clay or fabric or wool or the body. We all have a story to tell and we all have our own unique way of telling it.
But when the time comes, will we have the courage and the passion to take it?
Will we believe we are worth it?
Will we believe we are enough?