eng 319

Memoir 2nd Workshop draft

Beautiful Girl,

I am writing this memoir in part because I want to, I need to. For so long my childhood looked like a big messy dream tied into a couple of and excluded specific memories. I need(ed) to go back, sift through, understand, and heal. But I am also writing this memoir because I want you to hear it. Because I know what it is like to be a young girl, broken and lost. I know what it is like when your father denies you an intensely needed hug or accepting word, when the boy you love tells you that you are un-lovable. I know what it is like to feel there is no hope or reason to live, and to find yourself staring at a huge pile of pills. I know how it feels to sit in your closet sobbing so hard that your chest is pounding in your head, yet no sound breaks the darkness of the room, and you remain alone. But I also know that those moments of solitude and pain are not all that life promises. I also know that many joyful memories have been drowned by my sorrowful emotions, just waiting to resurface. I want you to hear my hope, and to see happiness in your life.

I have been rereading my journal entries from when I was a young girl, and desperately trying to tie memories to those passages. It is hard to remember specific details that you once struggled to forget. So here is my first advice to you: don’t try to forget. Don’t try to pretend your life is not happening, because no matter how far back in your brain or deep in your heart you push it, there it will throb like a sore thumb until you face it and grow.

The other advice I’d like to give you is to journal, or write your own memoir. People have been arguing with me that not everybody is meant to write, and perhaps they are correct. But there is a tremendous amount of healing that can come from the act of journaling, and even more so from the act of rereading your entries. My challenge for you is to just scribble down your day, your thoughts. Recount your painful memories on the page, and even more importantly, recount your joyful experiences. I didn’t do a very good job of writing about what made me happy growing up, and I greatly regret it, because I have no tangible entry to include in this memoir about my joy, only pieces of memory. The painful entries, I have plenty. Here is what I wrote.

My face could be mistaken for a waterfall. She lashes out at him with the sword of her words, aiming for his heart. She wants not to kill him but to injure him so badly that he must leave the fight. She looks to me for support and my guilt is spilled on the ground as she pierces my skin, using her cheap and childish words, telling me that it is because of him that she does not get what she needs.

. I laid staring up at the ceiling, my tears blurring the moon’s glow through the skylight. I just laid there silently, intently listening to my Mother’s verbal outburst and desperately trying to hear my father’s quiet words, to hear what hurt her so badly that she would say such things. The only words I remember were her screaming “I hate you, I want a divorce” over and over. I remember a pain so deep in my gut that I couldn’t even make a sound. Only now, thinking about the logistics of our living situation do I remember that my older brother was in the bed beneath me and my younger brother in the crib in the corner. Three of us were in that room, but the darkness encased me tightly in my bed, and I was alone.

During one of the good nights such a scene was forgotten and we were watching a movie. I can’t remember what the movie was, but I do remember my mother laughing. She laughed loudly and heartily with a big, glowing smile. I was sitting on my Dad’s lap and he was rubbing the palm of my hand against his. He told me he used to do that to get me to sleep when I was a baby. I’m sure it worked well because I still find that feeling calming. When the movie was over they let me crawl into bed to sleep with them. It was dark and quiet, the moon shining softly through the skylight. I laid right between them, my father on my right, my mother on my left, and I shared both their pillows. Strands of my mother’s long, soft hair fell out of her silly, blonde bun on top of her head and fell against my cheek, filling my nose with a sweet scent. I was warm and the comforter was soft. Sleep came quickly in such warmth. Before long, though, they each started to snore, a quiet rumble at first, and then in bursts of competing thunder. The sound was deafening and made comfort and sleep impossible. I was driven out into the cold bedroom to find retreat elsewhere.

I let the tears shed from my eyes and let my heart slow to a normal speed, wait for the pain to die down so I can hear the birds once again, but not even God’s beautiful gift of the outdoors can cure me. God created such beautiful things for my eyes gaze upon like the tiny pearls in the sky and the creatures hunting in the darkness, but my heart doesn’t feel it. I walk along the dark, deserted streets and imagine all the people safely in their beds dreaming of ridiculous things. When I come to my destination, though my heart’s destination is not yet met, I stare at the house, wondering if anybody cares that I’m gone.

Inside my home the walls are bright white and picture-less with a single plant by the window. I was sitting on the hard couch and staring blankly at the wall, just listening to my parents fighting in the kitchen. It was the usual bull-shit about who did what, and I hate you, and blah blah blah. Eventually words were said and their attention was turned to me, both waiting for me to say who was right. If I said my mother was right, then I would be dubbed as psychotic and stupid as my father dubbed her. If I said my father was right, my mom would cry and not speak to me. If I kept silent they would both be mad at me for not revealing each other’s shortcomings so that they could improve. What did I do? I left. I wandered out into the dark and cold and let my sobs bounce off the surrounding houses. Eventually I would climb up on top of our roof and perch myself right next to one of the skylights. I sat there for hours just listening to the fight the whole neighborhood could hear; the tears on my shirt illuminated by the moon.

On another occasion I found myself in the same place, only not to hear fighting, but rather to find peace. I cannot find it, but remember writing a poem while sitting on top of my roof and staring at the moon. It was cold and my fingers could barely bend to scribble the words onto the page, but the trees were still and the stars were quiet. Everyone I knew was asleep and I was left to dream, “a special guest to the stars” as a line from the poem states. I love the night, the stars and the moon, I love being outside in the cold air, letting it clear my nostrils and my mind. There is something calming about the cold dark, and something inspiring about a lone beacon in the sky. I have retreated to the night too many times to count, and still find myself wandering the streets in the moments when my heart is heavy. Though, at this point in my life I more often go out at night to just be in peace and to dream dreams that I emotionally cut off somewhere along my childhood. Dreams that could not exist for me in my home.

Here I battle for my Sanity, and it seems as though I exist on the losing team. I cannot explain to you why it is so because I do not know the foundation of insanity, nor do I know the precise moment one becomes enslaved by such. All I know for sure is that my mind is slowly transforming into something scary, undesirable, and uncontrollable, something that allows no courage, compassion, no comfort, and most and worst of all, no reality. Holes are my boss, routine is my motive. Nothing matters or has purpose, no good reason explains my everyday attempts at life. “Strength,” as I used to call it, is powerless against the inevitable slipping away into madness and into nothing but my madness. Imperfect, impure, un-loved, undesirable, misunderstood, a mistake, denied, discredited, unsatisfied, unintelligent, intolerable, unwanted...all the essence of me.

I was dating a boy and I swore I loved him. I desperately wanted him, like all those before him, to just see me, wholly me and love me. I wanted him to see how beautiful I was and to find me worthy to fight for. I had given my heart and body too soon to a boy too immature and selfish to see me for who I was, and I ended up abandoned with a shattered heart. Sitting at the kitchen table, devastated, I tried to reach out to my father. I needed my Daddy to hold me and tell me how beautiful I was, how worthy of true love I was, but I was unable to tell him what happened to me, even more unable to outright ask him to tell me those things.

The only thing I could do was rebel and act up, praying that he would patiently pursue my heart and make it better. But the only response he could muster for my rebellion was “okay, Paula.” He called me by my mother’s name. My mother is beautiful, but there was nothing more painful for me than to hear my father calling me Paula, because with the name came all the negative things he believed about her. He had deemed me insane.

He didn’t know the destruction he caused, but every time those words were spoken to me, he told my heart that no matter how emotionally abused and mistreated I was by the men I sought, it was always my fault. No matter how strong and independent I tried to be, I could not escape the “inevitable slipping away” into insanity. Through those words he told me that I was unworthy of love because if I tried to commit myself to a man, I would only cause him years of pain just as my mother had caused him. Sitting at my kitchen table I made the vow to never marry. I think this must be around the time that I stopped writing. The moment I felt like I had no power and nothing to offer, the moment I gave up to the lie that emotion and feeling was evil unless you were a male. That a woman has to keep her tongue quiet and a smile plastered on her face in order to be sane.

Years went by that I believed this to be true, but eventually I realized that I was believing a big, fat lie. I began to realize how beautiful I am, and how much love and warmth and joy I have to offer a special someone.

It was a gorgeous day. Sam and I were spending the afternoon walking around a quiet pond just as was our routine. We talked intimately about our pains and sufferings, about our dreams and our joys. He found me beautiful and openly cherished me for it, being careful to take care of my heart. A couple of months later and it was time for me to move to college and start a new life. He pursued my heart and asked me to be his, and I got to make the choice. I had the power to move forward with my life with a heart full of gratitude, and with a confidence in myself that would grow stronger in the years to come.

No, I am not completely healed from the pain I experienced growing up. And no, I don’t have an ending to share about meeting the man of my dreams and living happily together until deep into old age. In fact the only ending I have is really more of a beginning. I have a long future ahead of me that promises to be full of adventure and growth. A life that will teach me how to be passionate and to love myself and others.

This is my third piece of advice to you, Beautiful Girl. Don’t believe the lie that you are anything but beautiful, and desirable. Don’t give up when life is hard, because life has more to offer you than you know. More importantly, you have more to offer the world than you have discovered. Stay hopeful, dream, and write.