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.
