Storytelling

It’s hard to consider myself a writer. That word has so much weight to it. It has implications and expectations, none of which I feel I meet. First of all, I’ve never been published anywhere. Before this blog, my writing existed only in my leather-bound journals, scrap pieces of paper, and letters to people I’ve loved. Yet, describing myself as “writer” feels fitting all the same. When I was 10 or 11 years old, I remember discovering that my mom wrote poetry. She had multitudes of journals filled with her beautiful script. I poured over them and declared I, too, would be a poet. I wrote my first song that night, but I didn’t even write it down. I sang it to my mom, and she asked me how I would remember it. I insisted, “I’ll definitely remember it.” It felt like such a momentous moment, how would my memory ever betray me by erasing the lyrics from my mind?

I’m 23 now, and I definitely don’t remember those lyrics. I’ve written countless other little jingles since then. I write them when I’m in my car, driving. I write them when I’m stocking the shelves at work. I write them when I’m doing the dishes or taking a shower. I write them as I stroke the fur of my black cat. Sometimes, I stop what I’m doing and record myself so that I don’t forget. I have countless little snippets of songs saved in video form. Yet, I rarely ever go through those videos. I rarely transform my little verses into real songs.

The same can be said about poetry and short stories. In my journals and in my note apps on my phone and laptop, I have countless beginnings. Once upon a time, a great idea was born. Then, I began typing, and it slowly fizzled out. The end. For poems, I can sometimes come up with great one-liners, but the follow through is severely lacking. This is to say: most of my work exists only in its unfinished form. I have a handful of pieces I’ve finished and felt good about.

Does that make me a writer?

As a writer, I often feel compelled to tell the stories of those around me. My dad’s, for example. He was born in 1952 to my grandparents. He was the youngest of 6 boys. They grew up in much simpler times, as he loves to remind me. His first job as a teenager was pumping gas when it was only 25 cents per gallon. He went to a high school with a class of 40. By the time graduation rolled around 15 of them had dropped out due to getting pregnant. His class of 1970 was the last to graduate from the high school he went to. It shut down after that, and a town about 10 miles away absorbed all of its students. Upon graduating, my grandma got my dad hired at a factory. It was supposed to be temporary though, as he had dreams of following his brothers into the armed forces. Being flat footed, he knew he’d get denied, so he had one of his friends teach him how to fake an arched foot. When he finally perfected it, he got accepted. With only a few weeks until he would leave for basic, he kept working.

The factory my dad worked at made things out of rubber. In particular, on this day a couple weeks before he was to leave, he was making rubber door stops. He would put a piece of rubber down on a conveyor belt that would ease the rubber into two steel rollers and flatten it down so it could be more easily shaped into its final product. My dad ended up getting a stubborn piece that wouldn’t be guided in properly. Frustrated, and running out of time before the conveyor belt became backed up with pieces of rubber, he was determined to get this one through. He linked it together with another piece, figuring that it wasn’t long enough. As he bent down to look from the bottom to see if the piece was coming through, tragedy struck. By bending down, he’d gotten way too close and his arm went right where the rubber was meant to. He was stuck.

He called for help, and the workers nearest him rushed over, trying to pull him out of the machine. When they realized it wasn’t working, they finally pressed the emergency stop button. He doesn’t remember pain, at least not at first, but when he looked down and saw the state of his arm, he was shocked. What used to be a normal, functioning arm, was now only mangled flesh and bone. A searing pain came into his awareness. It was unlike anything he’d ever felt. He doesn’t remember the paramedics coming, nor does he remember the trip to the hospital. He remembers waking up some days later, with one less limb.

For me, my dad with one arm and a hook for a prosthetic on the other was all I’d ever known. It was hard to imagine anything else. Even as he told his story to me as a child, it felt surreal. I asked him, “Did you cry?”

“Hell yes I cried. It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt.”

To my young mind, that was the standard of how bad something was. If it could make my dad cry, it must’ve been horrible.

My dad is now nearly 70 years old. His liver is failing from drinking alcohol for the past 50 years. Each time I see him, his skin is a bit more yellow and sagging. His face a little less lively than the last time. Admittedly, I do not see him often. Having my dad as a dad was a challenge. It’s taken me some time, but I’m finally understanding just how much he went through and how that could impact a person. Of course, as a child, when all I needed was a caring, attentive father, I couldn’t have possibly understood that. So, I harbored quite a lot of resentment towards him. Even still, it is a process of relearning. Of accepting he is human, and understanding he did the best he could with what he had.

Knowing that my dad will never write out his story, it feels like I should. But it doesn’t stop there. When strangers come into the gas station I work at and start spilling their guts to me, I collect what they say. I store it away in a piece of my brain for later use. I am the story keeper. When I go to write pieces of fiction, those strangers live on through me. What once was a 2 minute interaction becomes something much greater.

There once was a man who would come in every morning at 4:45 on his way to work. He would buy two different brands of cigarettes. He paid with two separate cards. Each of his ring fingers had a different ring on them. As any rational person would, I came to the conclusion that this man was actually two men sharing the same body. I later went on to write him into a story with that same premise. I no longer see this man. I never learned his name. Yet, if he walked in today, I’d know exactly which cigarettes to grab off the shelf. I know where he works and even the kind of car he drives. He remains a stranger, but his impression on me will remain in my memory, and in my stories.

Every single person I’ve ever met or known has a story to tell. Too few of them will actually go on to tell them. Even my friend, Alina, who is a prolific writer. She writes every single week for a column in our local paper– but never does she tell her own stories. Not that the stories she tells aren’t important, they certainly are. She talks of rock stars, alive and dead and all the impacts they’ve had, whether that be on history, the music industry, or herself. I wonder who will tell her story.

I don’t know why it’s so important to me that these stories be told. Maybe it’s simply because I’d like to hear them. Maybe it’s because I find it absolutely magical that someone you see on a regular basis can have depths to them you’d never imagine. Hidden inside them, whether on purpose or just out of convenience, are endless opportunities, missed connections, dreams, and aspirations. If only you ask the right person the right question, you’re suddenly transported in time to a memory that was responsible for creating the person there in front of you.

I think it’s important too because the idea of these stories fading away and dying with those who carry them saddens me. Imagine all of the people who never tell their stories. My dad may not ever write his story or share it wide-scale, but he did at least tell his children and those around him. Some people live their entire lives, never sharing with their children what they themselves experienced as children. Then, upon dying, their children realize they never really knew their parents. I can never ensure that people understand me. I can do my best to convey my thoughts and feelings, but at the end of the day, I can’t control how others translate that information. No one will ever see things from exactly the vantage point that I do. Every moment leading into this one has shaped my into exactly the person who is experiencing what I experience. Without that experience, it’s hard to say how I would perceive this world. And so, being as how we all have such vastly unique experiences and points of view, it feels like my duty to try and show you how I see the world. Who am I to keep that to myself? Who am I to decide that that information is not worthy of being shared? What if it ends up being important in shaping someone else’s experience, that’s leading them to exactly what they need to see from THEIR perspective?

I know it sounds a bit hokey, but it’s important to me. We’ve all got things of value to say, to share. We all have lessons we’ve learned, mistakes we’ve made, victories achieved. Each and every one of us is full of stories and experiences of love and tragedy. Laughter and pain.

So what about you? What are your stories? What moments in your life do you feel made you who you are? And what’s stopping you from telling them?