Becoming

I was born with stories in my bones.

Before I could read, I'd flip the pages of books for hours, staring.

Before I could write, I would scrawl wild black squiggles on white paper, imagine a tale between the madding lines.

At school, I was silent and walled-off as a ghost. I was afraid of my peers; they seemed to possess a realness I didn’t. I waited all day to go home, to fall back into the world of pretend like going to sleep. I was a mouse, a dog, a lion. My imagination was so all-encompassing that adults worried I might not know the difference between reality and fiction. I did; I just picked fiction every time.

As I grew into my teenage years, I dealt with the crippling shyness that rendered me mute by creating a new character: myself. There was already a sense of unreality around the body I saw in the mirror, and like a cardboard cutout I dressed it and walked it through life, the world tapping like rain on my outermost layer. For a time, this was enjoyable before it was empty.

At twenty-five, I shortened the name I felt no connection to into initials, an author’s name. When I wrote, I felt, I am a conduit. A black hole through which stories flow. I thought this was artistic and deep, but it was just another method of avoidance, a way to devalue my life outside of books, the unwanted self-knowledge and yearnings that had begun to pile up at the back of my mind like a bunch of uncashed checks.

Art is meant to support life and not the other way around. And eventually, my words dried up, the tributaries of that stream no longer coming up to my door. One day I didn't want to write. One day I didn't want to live.

Before me there was a wood. There were two roads. There was a choice. I gave name to my demons. Depression. Dysphoria.

I picked up the phone.

I went to therapy.

I cashed the checks.

I took the pills.

I spoke the truth.

They say the birth of the king is not the day he is born but the day he properly becomes. This could also be said of the writer. And becoming, as is said in The Velveteen Rabbit, takes a long time.

This wasn’t Happily Ever After, don't get me wrong. But it was “Once Upon a Time. It was “And Then”, when it could’ve been “The End”.

If you'd have asked me when I was a child if there would ever be a day I would choose, from the cast of all my colorful characters, to be myself for once, I wouldn't have thought it possible.

But now when I touch things, I feel them.

Now when I sign my name, I mean it.

I do not stop existing when I stop putting words to page.

I am not a mere conduit; I am the source.