Storytelling

“Sarah’s writing a book,” my husband says to his mother.

My mother-in-law is the sweetest woman alive. You could tell her I was building sculptures out of feces, and she’d probably find something positive to say about it and mean it. So she looks at me, smiling, and says, “Really? What’s it about?”

I’m told every writer hates that question.
I think it’s because they’re not sure how to squeeze everything in their brain into audible, succinct words for the humans outside their heads.
Or maybe it’s because they feel the same way I do.
“No,” I blurt out. “Nope, I can’t say. I’m sorry … but it’s like going out in public without my clothes on. I can’t say. I just … I can’t.”
…. Plus, it just sounds stupid ….

Because it is like I’ve been asked to strip in the hospital again.
You want me to bear my SOUL to you, vulnerable like that? No, absolutely not. I can’t do it.
Don’t judge me for the insanity in my head.

I think everyone EXPECTS me to write about last year. Create some moving, raw autobiography of the hospitalization, the ventilator, the lupus ravaging my bloodstream. The big things. The bold things. The things you used to see just by looking at me. “Look how God saved me.”

I want to write that. I’d like to say that, maybe one day.
Or maybe that’s just a story for the people who know me and walked beside me.
And, you know, the people reading it here.
Maybe that’s a story for another day, when the therapy has pried open the doors my mind keeps slamming shut. When I don’t dissociate just thinking about the bedsores, the tears, and the fear and isolation boring into my skin.
Yeah, maybe I’ll write it then.
But, right now? Right now, I’m still in the middle of that story. One day, I’ll be near the epilogue, and I can look back and say, “Ah, see how it all makes sense? Here’s the rising action and the conflict and the climax and the resolution …”
Right now, I’m sitting there, tapping my fingers because I can’t sit still, because I hate eyes on me, and saying, “Um … I THINK this is the resolution? I don’t know… it doesn’t FEEL resolved… maybe? Golly, is there a Sparknotes for this?”

I want to be a writer.
I mean, I am a writer. It’s what I do.
I’ve been doing it for years.
I’m just not bound and on a bookshelf.

I guess I can say I’m writer. I just hate the brightening eyes and they, “Oh! Anything I might have read?the ”
… Not unless you used to read IT tips for fun …
I tried to explain once, and the speaker replied, “Oh, I thought maybe you wrote something interesting, like novels.”
No, not yet.

Maybe one day.
Oh, it seems such a silly possibility.
But until I find full-time, all-encompassing work, I might as well try, right?