I have been trying not to choose the pen, but it is becoming clear that the pen is choosing me. I have tried other methods, other mediums, as a means to free my artistic expression.
Photography? But I have never once saved money for a camera.
Portraiture? But I lack the delicate and deliberate hands of a drawer, let alone a painter. Wrists that glide as if on a pivot and swivel. Lines that float on crisply weaved paper.
To sketch? I envy those who can.
A musician? But I have never played an instrument, well at least. I played the trumpet once in the fifth grade, only to be given edicts in femininity by my mother.
“Trumpets aren’t ladylike.” My brother, 17 years my senior chiming in, “Yeah moomie (my nickname)! Why didn’t you choose the clarinet or something like that?” Trumpet: Brass with a spit valve; unladylike. Clarinet or flute: long and phallic? Just fine.
Little did they know I had actually chosen the trumpet because of said spit valve. I was 10. A child. No clue about feminine tendencies. None the less, I was terrible and was soon kicked out of the band. Once in high school, I discovered I could sing. All the students were forced to take some type of art, a freshman year requirement. I was lucky enough not to be stuck in the band again. Four years of the choir was a profound learning experience and music has always been a part of my family’s’ DNA. However, even now, singing doesn’t beckon me the way words do. Not to mention, my constant indulgence in marijuana has changed my vocals somewhat dramatically.
My obsessive compulsive neurosis with words and ink began way before any of this, however. My mother surrounded me with books as a child. I drowned in a paradise of synonyms and rhymes. When I was around 8 or 9 years old, much to my present dismay, my mother would give me three books about history. Black history specifically. Two African-American encyclopedias and a small anthology of African-American poetry, The Black Poets.
The encyclopedias scared me. It was the first time I had seen cruelty in photographic form. I put both of the encyclopedias down for months and tried desperately to avoid anything containing the word ‘Lynch’; surname or otherwise.
My fear made space for me to devour the book of black poetry. My heart raced as I flipped the pages. Langston Hughes! Phyllis Wheatley! Slave folk lyrics, the word ‘nigger’ printed on the page.
How salacious!
Ecstatic, I sprinted to my mother bedroom declaring, “I want to be a poet!”
Obligingly, she purchased me a journal. “Write prayers, in it too,” she requested.
Foolish, Naïve child!
All my life I have battled with the pen and prose.
I pamper my other vices. They are well fed, plump and juicy. I lay with them, teasing their senses. I remain their submissive. I nurture them like children and very often they abuse me in return.
But you.
You nurtured me on the loneliest of days. Confused, small, me. Wrestling with thoughts and complex feelings.
Young, fat, black.
When I would tuck away in my room for hours, desperate to swallow myself in solitude, you were there.
When my mother died, you were there.
When I got my first boyfriend, it was you who helped me tussle with the adrenaline of young love.
When I had my first kiss, lost my virginity, had my first heartache, went to college, lost my first friend, experienced my first un-clinically declared depression, my first love. Now, as I sit here battling with my first regrets.
You.
Always nurturing me. Calling me.
I’ve tried to separate myself from you on several occasions. Me the individual. I without you.
But, as fate would have it, you came to me right when I was becoming a woman.
You are a part of me.
Even as my supposed breaks from writing, you always show your face. I feel you. As I closed my eyes that day, my feet hanging over the charcoal and dingy colored waters of the inner harbor, I wanted to describe the elegance I experienced. My peace in solitude after a long day at work. The breeze on my face, sometimes flirtatious, other times aggressive. The rush of imagined angst and adrenaline to my heart at the thought of the police boat catching me with a blunt in my hand.
Even now, as I sit on the back of this bumpy bus ride, I struggle to find the right words. I know I lack appropriate description. I have always lacked detail in my work. Maybe if I had practiced instead of protesting. Or instead of reading the manifestation of other writers’ love affairs, I would have the words, but I didn’t want the responsibility of the pen.
A way with words is a way to someone’s heart. What if I broke a stranger’s heart with my words?
And what about me? The way critics and reviewers rip writers apart as if we aren’t tormented enough by our own dreams and failures. Why would anyone choose to be a writer anyway?
To compete with millions of other idiots to be named amongst Toni Morrison, Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin, E.E. Cummings, Alice Walker, Virginia Woolf, the list could go on and on…
Luckily for me the need to compete is in my veins.
I need you. The burning passion in my breast.
I crave to try and fail then to never try. (I see you on the faces of persons passing by, in the unbroken stare of young lovers, in the oils of Van Gogh, and in the cries of newborn babies.)
So here’s to you.
My spark, my pain. The bridge to my inner child; my true self.
I will write until the bones in my wrists become brittle with time.
I will stay up late nights tormenting myself to tattoo my thoughts to the page.
I will stay as high as you need me to.
I would start smoking cigarettes again if you asked me to
You helped me make the worst parts of me into my best. I spent many a nights transcribing my self-hatred onto paper, desiring to be unburdened.
I love myself because of you.
I am free because you are the best part of me.
It is time to set the others free.