COMMENTARY | Don’t let anyone crush your creativity. Tell your story.
I wanted to write before I could even read. When I was 4 years old, Dad read a lot of children’s books to me, but my favorite was “The Adventures of Raggedy Ann & Andy.” The cover was powder blue with a canary yellow title. The only illustrations were at the beginning of each story with maybe one more in the middle of the chapters. I would dwell on these drawings and make up stories different from the ones Dad read to me.
I had a rudimentary understanding of letters and words. I knew Dad somehow deciphered the symbols as he read to me out loud. He also used similar symbols with pen and paper when he wrote grocery lists or signed checks.
So, when I sat alone with my “Raggedy Ann & Andy” book open in front of me, I took his pen and scribbled little loops and spaces in the margins. I copied the adjacent paragraphs, squaring each group of doodles.
I quickly learned how to read in kindergarten and wrote two books in first grade. It was a momentous class project, and it took an entire school quarter to finish. We learned to brainstorm on worksheets designed to look like a thought bubble with lines drawn from it to other little thought bubbles. I drafted the outlines of my stories that way. My first two books were “My Trip to My Mom’s House” (nonfiction) and “The Day the Spaceship Landed” (obviously fiction).
We laid out construction paper pages and drafted our sentences with pencils and rulers. Then we illustrated each page. Next, we used markers and colored pencils to put the finishing touches on our masterpieces. Finally, we selected wallpaper scraps for our cover design, and the teacher helped us bind and glue our books into hard covers.
I felt so nervous yet accomplished when we were done. I was nervous because this was the biggest undertaking of my short life up to then. I wanted it to be just right because I planned to send them to my mom as a present. I felt accomplished because I was an official writer.
“My Trip to Mom’s House” was especially poignant for both my mother and me. Mom left me in Dad’s sole custody when I was 2, and the first time I remember visiting her was the summer prior to kindergarten. We saw “Gremlins” on the big screen and ate at Shoney’s, both of which I highlighted in my book. Mom lost everything over the course of her life – including me – but she kept that book until the end. She was my first muse and my first reader.
My Dad remarried and I was blessed with a step-brother and two step-sisters. We moved to Pimbina Hollow, Mo. We wandered freely through the pastures and woods of our neighbors. Our imaginations had a wide and wild palette from which to draw.
One idle summer afternoon, my step-brother, Danny, and I laid down in the meadow on the hillside opposite our cottage. As we stared at the wide open sky fringed by the yellow grass, we began to wonder out loud. We imagined the remote past of the Hollow: how the fossils in the dry creek bed were evidence of a great, Midwestern ocean; how the arrowhead we picked up in the woods was the ghost of a long-forgotten hunt. After talking to each other into an excited frenzy, we decided to write a science textbook. We’d call it “The Natural History of Pimbina Hollow.” We never wrote a word, but we dreamt with all the freedom and ambition only 7-year-olds possess.
On another hot, lazy afternoon that same summer, I stood alone in the gravel drive in front of our house throwing rocks at the trunk of a big oak. I love words. Not just the definitions, but the shapes and sounds of them, too. I was particularly focused on the shape and sound of “author.” I savored its two-vowel, two-consonant, vowel-consonant symmetry just as I did the thud of each pebble against the bark. I slid my mind’s eye from the high peak of a capital A along the soft slope of the rest of the word. That day I decided I wanted to be an author.
As picturesque as life in the Hollow was, I often felt excluded and singled out by my siblings who shared a biological and developmental heritage that preceded and precluded me. I began to fantasize about my time with my biological mother because she spoiled me with movies and restaurant dinners. So, when the opportunity to spend a summer with her came along, I jumped at the chance to be an only child again for a while.
My innocence was cradled in the arms of Pimbina Hollow, but life took a grim turn after that. Around August, Mom began to pressure me to stay. She took me to an attorney who said I had the legal right to choose which parent had custody of me. She assumed it was a done deal, so I assented. Shortly after, she began to yell and sulk when I didn’t live up to her expectations. When school started, so did the beatings.
My children’s book fantasies turned into horror stories. I constantly feared my next misstep that would lead to more whippings or confinement in the attic. I worried about using the wrong words and getting a mouthful of soap and cayenne pepper. I endured drawn-out interrogations and wild death threats. I replayed all the morbid scenarios Mom repeatedly described: getting sent to an insane asylum, neighbor kids turning into paid spies for her, my genitals being mutilated and burned because of my sinful thoughts.
My imagination was held hostage. I drew the same picture every time I was alone – a towering robot untouched by missiles from submarines and jets. I wanted to be unfeeling and invulnerable, too.
My dreams – along with my nightmares – stayed locked up in that attic in Dunlap, Ill., for 29 years. I kept the door locked tight with dope and booze. I ran from my past with no hope of a future because all I saw were monsters behind me and sorrows ahead.
Then Joanne Zuhl, executive editor at Street Roots, gave me her card at my drug court graduation. She offered me the opportunity to write a column for the paper. She opened the door to my long-held hope. When we met to talk about my options, however, I had no idea what I would write or if I was even good enough to be an author.
So, I went back to my apartment with this astonishing new prospect and an all-consuming existential crisis. I froze at the threshold of my childhood dream because of my childish fear. What if writing was just another disappointment? So, I didn’t write a single word and ghosted Joanne. I drifted into self-pity and self-destruction. I drank myself out of clean and sober housing and wandered the streets with no purpose.
Despite persistent depression, I made a few small efforts to turn around and discovered an entirely new reservoir of confidence. I simply imagined I deserved happiness. I was willing to pretend I was enough, and that modest shift in my thinking made all the difference.
I have 19 months addiction-free. And while my traumatic childhood experiences were not my fault, I accept responsibility for their healing as an adult. In fact, writing has been pivotal in the process.
Now, I’m fulfilling my greatest aspiration. I am an author. I share the joy and pain of my life and a few readers even write back telling me their struggles for identity – for hope. We meet along this written road. We touch each other’s hearts without ever meeting in person.
Every moment is a memory. Every memory is a lesson. The power of imagination is most potent when combined with honesty and compassion. Histories and legends have changed the world. Please, tell your story. Don’t let anything or anyone rob your creative spark. I would love to hear from you. We all would.
This series is a first-hand account of the struggles and successes of overcoming trauma, mental illness, addiction, homelessness and more.
© 2019 Street Roots. All rights reserved. | To request permission to reuse content, email editor@streetroots.org or call 503-228-5657, ext. 404.
Street Roots is an award-winning, nonprofit, weekly newspaper focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. Our newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Learn more about Street Roots
