The Retreating Narrator...

I have wanted to be many things but there are few things I've wanted to do. I have wanted to be a cellist. I have wanted to be a singer and I have wanted to be a dancer. I have wanted to be many things, not for the work itself, but for the identity. I try on identities like they are outfits.

I have wanted to be an artist because I have wanted to be seen as passionate and tragic. I don't like to dance, but I like black leotards with pink tights. I like the idea of being thin and tortured by my art. I do love playing the cello, but was too busy thinking about what clothes I would wear to make myself look as dramatic as possible while playing the cello.

Having grown up in an emotionally volatile household, I've learn how to gauge the moods of others to a fine degree--I'm so good at this that I seldom notice I am doing it. It was pointed out to me this week (in therapy) that it's because of this learned habit of looking outward rather than in that I have very little faith in and very little knowledge of who I am and what I think. My brother reacted to our family by turning inward, by becoming reserved and spending most of his time alone in his room. I reacted by being unable to spend time alone, afraid something terrible was happening outside my bedroom door, something that I was sure I had the power to avert or fix.

I have an especially sharp memory. I can recall every detail of a room, the position of every actor in the scene but I can't tell you what I thought, at the time or now. This comes across in my writing. I am adept at creating evocative scenes, but I'm barely in them. I see my writing as a painting. A portrait of a room, every detail meticulously rendered, but I appear only as a retreating figure, having created the scene and then turned away.

And I'm beginning to think that I don't want to share my feelings and opinions on events because if they were put on paper, they would be permanent and I would be left exposed. I don't want to commit to my feelings or opinions because I have very little confidence in them, and they are constantly shifting. I am unclear about who I am and it is important to me to have control over what others think of me. I want to present a calculated version of myself in my writing, but this doesn't make for good reading or a compelling narrator. I think that what I'm discovering as I write this is that I need to let go. What others think of me is so important because the only way I know who I am is what I see reflected in the eyes of others.

But singing is something I have always loved. I love the way it feels, my breath running over my vocals chords like a bow across strings. I began with the idea of writing songs so that I could perform but after years of performing it's the work that I enjoy, not the performance.

I began writing because I wanted to be seen as an artist but in another Wizard of Oz like turn, I've found that I've always been an artist. I am dramatic. I am tortured. I am, for better or worse, who I always wanted to be.

And now that I've proven, in the last few years of my life, that I am dramatic without trying it's time to sit down and do the work. To be a writer, but also to write. To be a singer, but also to sing. To wake up in the morning, make coffee, and be a courageous writer, to be present in my own story.