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Thursday, February 5, 2015

I Am The Story

A blank page.

Kind of like my life before others drew on it.

31 years old and I am only beginning to write my own story on my own pages in a book that is no longer blank but filled with the scrawls of everyone else I allowed to scratch with pen and ink.

This was my story, written for me, but not written by me.

I was told god would write my story. I was told that others could write it better than I, could write the words god wanted but that I was too naive and immature and untrustworthy to write myself. They were the scribes, I was the submissive blank pages, god was the dictator. But there is no dictator and the ones that placed themselves as scribes could not control the unruly characters and the story line, and had no idea where the ending was or what would happen in the middle pages. They didn't know the first thing about the character I am. They made a mess of the blank pages that were my soul and life and I let them.

But no longer.

I am left now holding the pen in my own hand, after wrenching it out of the hands of previous scribes. I hover above a page no longer blank, full of crossed-out words that can never quite be made good enough or erased, their indents and marks evident and plenty. A story that looks out of control, about a character I don’t recognize. Yet here I am, turning that page to find the next one blank and the possibilities endless. And it is both frightening and exhilarating.

Because now I am the dictator and I am the scribe and I am the story.

What will be written from now on will be written by my own hand, in the language of my own soul, and my character is born again.

I cannot change what was written both by my consent and without it, and perhaps I don't want to, since who I am is the product of what has been written, and who can go back and predict an unwritten future? 

But I control what gets written from now until the day I die, pages covered in agony and joy and raw life. I wish I knew I always had this control.

I wish I knew, half a life ago, that I alone was the author of my story.


I am determined now to make it a good one. 




2 comments:

  1. Hey Darcy, it's Kate from Australia.
    I relate to everything you write. To this post, I must simply add:

    Invictus
    by William Ernest Henley

    Out of the night that covers me,
    Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
    I thank whatever gods may be
    For my unconquerable soul.

    In the fell clutch of circumstance
    I have not winced nor cried aloud.
    Under the bludgeonings of chance
    My head is bloody, but unbowed.

    Beyond this place of wrath and tears
    Looms but the Horror of the shade,
    And yet the menace of the years
    Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

    It matters not how strait the gate,
    How charged with punishments the scroll.
    I am the master of my fate:
    I am the captain of my soul.

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