The story of my childhood is a complicated sentence that I am always trying to finish, to finish and put behind me. – Hilary Mantel
I have at least 6 (or possibly more) versions of the start of a memoir. A few of those are over 50 pages. A few I open and read for a few moments that – argh!! – no, no, no, no, no!! Remembering where I was when I wrote it, or horrified by the framing, the sentences, the way I begin. Argh. This is the challenge and gift of putting anything – anything – into words.
I write, I blog, I percolate sentences largely to empty out my head, which retains facts and stories and snippets from years ago and yesterday as if they were precious metal, gold. And, perhaps they are. I write to figure it out, or try to, what matters, what that moment meant, who was that, who am I? I write because the image of that day, that person, that seemingly small incident that wasn’t small in the end, is still colored in bold red and blue and green and white. I write because the stories I have lived and heard and witnessed are engraved on my broken heart.
Writing a personal story that is ongoing – and an ongoing challenge to understand – is hard. Women’s lives tend to be more complicated than men’s are, by and large. This makes for much more complex and tangled stories, much more difficult to tell. I could write a book just about my reproductive history, or another about my sexual assault and abuse history, two separate yet closely related histories. Argh. And where to start? A version I have starts with my mother, and hers. Their lives, their histories known and unknown, are inextricably connected to mine.
There are, for us, so many roads taken or not, so many tangential stories to tell or skip over, skip beyond, forget, bury – so many explanations for this and that moment, choice, behavior, outcome, speculation, assumption, fear, grace.
One of these days – perhaps during what looks likely to be a long, cold winter – I will sit in this chair, and decide whether or not to apply myself seriously to the project of writing a memoir. I know I am not alone in this endeavor; I also know how much I owe to those who have written about their lives, in fictional or non-fictional writings. Mary Karr, Charlotte Bronte, Melissa Febos, Elizabeth Gilbert, Rachel Cusk, Anne Lamott, Doris Lessing, Patricia Lockwood, Mary McCarthy, Dorothy Allison, and so many more.
I have Virginia Giuffre’s book, Nobody’s Girl, on the top of my to-be-read pile. Deep breaths.
Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship. – Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird