To write one’s self: reflections on the stories we have to tell

Don’t write yourself
in between worlds,

rise up against
multiple meanings,

trust the trail of tears,
and learn to live.

             – Paul Celan

I have resisted the act of writing my self. Writing about myself. The conceit of imagining that my own experiences hold a value, interest or point of connection for others. I wanted to tell stories, inventions, creations that were removed from the inexorable ordinariness of my own life.

I am not sure I have that gift. I fear that all the stories I have that are worth telling are real. Not true stories. I do not believe there is an objective truth to the stories we tell ourselves or others. But they are real.

For many years I worked as a storyteller. Not in the conventional sense of the word. I worked with survivors of acquired brain injury and their families. Whether I was meeting with clients, advocating with professionals or leading support groups stories were my medium. I had hundreds of stories, I had a facility for remembering the broad details of the experiences of our clients and their families. Tales of courage, tales of horror, tales of the ordinary and the everyday. I was able to pull out an example whenever I required one to offer warning, hope, validation. And I was able to do so without revealing identifying details.

As always I was the master of ambiguity. After all that was how I engaged with the world myself. But what is essential in a professional capacity is crippling in a personal sphere.

I have touched at the edges of my own stories, in so far as I am learning to articulate them, in this space from time to time. And I am beginning to wonder whether it is a folly for me  to assume that I have the capacity to make up stories, to entertain with carefully constructed lies.

Or if this mess of a life that has piled up in front of me like heavy wet snow against a plow has to be cleared, examined, transformed into words on a page before I can even begin to figure out if there might be something here that someone else might want to read.

In the coming days I will officially be two months out from the night a blood clot very nearly took my life. My chest still feels tight, bruised and cracked ribs are slow to heal completely, but I can finally get out and walk with comfort – something that was still impossible a few weeks ago. Rat poison is my friend.

I took my camera out into the neighbourhood this afternoon. The foliage is turning colour, the sky is crystal blue, yet I found my attention turning to the cracks in the road, the fallen leaves in the gutters. I photographed the little things that caught my eye and tried not to think too much.

Author: roughghosts

Literary blog of Joseph Schreiber. Writer. Reader. Editor. Photographer. View all posts by roughghosts