Vanilla

Narcissist. How dare you think of yourself so much. Stop reflecting. These thoughts, they are cumbersome.

I've always thought of myself as vanilla bean (all natural, of course) with caramel swirl and chunks of oddly shaped fudge. Some days I would even top myself with tiny pastel colored marshmallows. I didn't think I was just vanilla. But, just vanilla I may very well be.

Cruising the Internets, I try on posts for size. I shake them out and dig between their lines. Wondering. Do I fit? Does it fit? I read posts on disorders, loss, heartache, revelation, anger, and how to get the poo in the potty. I read about days too long and lives too short. I read about blossoming affairs, too much booze, sexless marriages, and hurdling victimization. I read abstract poetry that bleeds and pleads on the page. I read words that creep up the bony edges of your spine and whisper tauntingly in your ear, "You are not enough."

I cringe at the thought. I bend under the weight of my insecurities.

I remember my first year teaching high school. Roomless, I pushed around a cart, peering over the tower of files while navigating the perilous halls of the ancient school where dirt covered windows cast long shadows and perilous doubts. I even had a horn on my cart. The students ate me alive; they greedily gnawed on my fear and devoured my pride. Knowing there was very little to eat, I let them.

"Fake it until you make it," I told myself. You are only at year one. What shit-laced advice to give oneself. I didn't want to fake it, but I desperately needed to make it, bills to pay and all. I smiled with full teeth. I laughed with my whole aching body. I showed not one ounce of weakness and sucked back frustrated tears. They only saw what I showed them--my flesh stayed hidden, my bones buried. The smile was a simple yet perfect act of defiance.

I push through this blog, these posts. Am I writing down the bones of my history? Am I reflecting on my fragile present and the lives I have birthed ? Am I picking at half-healed scabs, hoping the salve of written words will heal? If so, like the clinician evaluating his patient, you should all be taking notes. Copious notes. On imaginary paper.

The truth. I can't fake it. I can't exist in spaces that aren't mine, even while I long for comfort in the soft folds of experience. My own story only occupies the periphery of where I am. I peck at it with my words, I pull at it with phrases drenched in longing. Longing to be more than the sum of another's history. My history was never about me. I was merely the observer in waiting.

But the words, won't they shape the stories, the fictions and truths you ache to tell? Will they? Or, will they fall flat and tumble across the page, exposed and empty? Gentle words, how can I place such a burden on you to provide shape to my existence?

I tell my stories against the grain of other people's histories. I tremble with the realization that maybe I have not lived. Maybe I have buried my truths for fear that they will break, will bleed, or even worse, fade against the backdrop of stories too vanilla to tell.

You cannot be what you are not. You cannot write what you do not know.

Yet this is it, this is what I have. I cling to it, the writing. It is my oxygen and I have been breathless far too long.

I don't know yet what I am. I don't know yet what I know. But, I know those words, no matter how clumsy and forced they may be at times. I know they are me. Vanilla? Maybe.

For now.