When I was a child, I was a strange child, or so I was repeatedly told. I was a Daddy’s girl, by no stretch of the truth and I was also frequently reminded that I had a very active and vivid imagination.
Prone to fainting when I was very young, due to heart issues – I further admit I was a little bit of a drama queen.
I was hammy and playful and easily controlled the kids my mother babysat with ideas for games and adventures to be had (it was not uncommon for me to build an elaborate skit with nothing more than the MacGyver mind of 9 years old, putting on what I believed was Shakespeare with nothing more than a handful of daycare kids, a pile of cardboard and a bundle of markers.
With that said, I was a free spirited and sometimes angry kid, or so I was repeatedly told.
My Dad often referred to me as the “strange duck” or “odd duck” and despite our relationship turmoil, I remain to this day, a Daddy’s girl -and still answer to “strange duck” and “pumpkin” and “kiddo”. He is one of my dearest.
My mother, which is a whole other story, tried desperately and often forcefully to fit me into the life she intended. “Why can’t you just be normal.” “Odd one out” “Independent”.
To her credit, I believe in my final high school year, she had a moment when I must have reminded her of herself and the ferocity of the dreams she never fulfilled haunted her enough to encourage, just once, “Run away to Scotland. Follow your dream and don’t come back.”
But it was a one-time offer and I was too surprised by her change of heart to take her up on it, for sure it was probably a trap anyway. “You’re too hard to control,” she’d say.
All this I tell you, to give framework to the belief I grew up in…. that somehow, I was not like the others. Made of strange materials, both flawed and awkward, perhaps even a little alien.
I’m sure there’s not an emo or goth child on this planet who feels like they are understood and accepted by their family – and isn’t there a little emo in all of us?
But the truth is, most of my life I have never really had a sense of belonging and most of my life has been centered around the constant awareness of my family, my tribe, my beginning roots – and I’m so used to it that it hardly even surfaces in my consciousness anymore.
Until recently.
I admitted not that long ago, that when I was a child I prayed on my knees to god, “Please let me have been adopted.”
As a very young child, I imagined that if I had been adopted, then all the incongruities of my life would be explained by the simple reasoning that I was not exactly intended to be here – in this family situation – with such dissimilarity.
To be fair, in a child’s eyes – I just wasn’t looking for the similarities. Because if I were, I would have noticed – for as much as I am opposite my family, I am also powerfully identical.
But anywhoo, as a child I could not recognize the things for which I was very much like them – I only saw the differences – and they were indeed vast.
The most obvious one comes to mind after all that I have been thinking about recently – the way I see the world around me is spectacularly different than most of my kin.
True conversation when I was a child, actually I think I was about twelve.
Me: She was wearing a scarlet shirt.
Her: Red.
Me: No, it was more of a scarlet.
Her: Scarlet IS red. Why can’t you just say red like everyone else?
Me: Because it wasn’t red, it was more like a scarlet, or I guess maybe it could have been crimson. But it definitely wasn’t mahogany – no, it was scarlet.
Her: Everyone else says red. So why can’t you just talk normal like everyone else? You always exaggerate and I never believe anything you say.
Ridiculous as it seems, these types of arguments were not uncommon between me and my family.
So the trouble lately is a common argument that comes from a couple of my family members.
I am an exaggerator.
I am a liar.
Or so I have been repeatedly told.
Hence the circling lately. Round and round and round I go. Are they right? Am I a lair? Do I exaggerate? Does that mean I am lying? Does that mean I can’t be trusted? Does that mean I can’t be a writer because I am a liar?
What does it mean?
From my earliest memories I have been a storyteller. Playacting. Writing. Gaming. Acting. Performing skits and reenactments. Mimicking.
Is there an inherent level of exaggeration in storytelling? Yes.
Did I exaggerate any more than any other child? I don’t know.
Did I exaggerate any more than other children my age and creative imagination? I have no idea.
Do I exaggerate beyond the bounds of normal now? I’m sure I do sometimes, but I try not to make a habit of it.
Do I tell lies? I have told lies on occasion. White lies. Dark lies. Lies by omitting the truth. Lies of misdirection. Is it a habit? No.
Did I lie frequently when I was a child? TOTALLY. What child doesn’t? “I’m too sick to go to school.” “I love church.” And so on and so forth.
Have I told someone that they rock that dress when it really makes them look fat? Yes, I’ve done that. But never to anyone I love.
Have I said I love you when I didn’t mean it? No.
Have I said I was going to do something and then I never got around to it or changed my mind? Yes. I’ve done that too. Did I have every intention when I first said I’d do it? Absolutely.
Have I ever intentionally cheated someone? Yes. Most notably in my memory was the time when I was 13 and counted 26 gummy treats and told the clerk I counted 25. I cried all night because I felt so bad. Since then – I can’t recall a purposeful intent toward dishonesty. Unless you call pirating music which I will admit – I have been a party to on occasion.
Am I a liar? Maybe. I honestly don’t know right now. Because why would anyone say it to me if it weren’t somehow true? I’m stumped.
And so you can see, for the last two months I have circled my mind. Trying to see the points of view from the other side. Where have I been wrong? What could I have done?
What can I change? What can I do to regain the favor of those I look up to? How do I stay in the graces of my family? Etc. Etc.
The reason this is so important is because it fundamentally calls into question my honor and my very voice.
Both of which are mandatory tools of my ability to write, to weave story, to sculpt words. If I am a liar then there is nothing else to say. There is no story worth telling because all the threads are spun from my center and if the center is flawed or faulty – the threads will not hold together, the weft will be weak and the fabric will collapse.
If I am an exaggerator then I cannot accurately express the essence of the scenes. And while I understand that a writer’s voice is also graced with the poets touch for flowery words so that it speaks past the mind and resonates directly to the heart – this can only be done, I think if the exaggeration is in check – too much and you are falling into the land of total fiction.
And if I am right, it gets worse. Worse meaning – fundamentally, I am not a liar, and do not exaggerate beyond the bounds of poetic expression…. And if I am within these limits, if I am true to the nature of what I am, a storyteller, then I lose my fragile sense of belonging with my kin because it means there is no longer any denying….
That I am made of strange materials.
That the approval and acceptance I have always wanted is not meant for me from those who cannot see me for the magic of my oddity.
I was the child who used the rope swing to cross the creek to the Kingdom of Tarabitha, while the rest of my family just crossed the creek to the field on the other side.
I was the child that sang to the neighborhood dogs because I was certain they understood me. I kept magic rocks in my pockets and called apples, “power cells for my mechanical tummy”. I blew up a bag of balloons and tied them to a box and sat in it in the back yard with a homemade sandwich and my favorite toys, I think I was even wearing my roller-skates at the time and truly believed that the balloon box would float me away to some grand adventure. I was 7 and didn’t yet know about helium, but the potential was ever surrounding me for some grand adventure or story.
These strange materials are not so strange to many other people in this world. My strange materials are only strange to the family into which I was born. It’s not a bad thing to be made of strange materials – it’s just lonely sometimes and disorienting, and people look at you strange when you’re an adult woman and bite into an apple and say, “This is a well-charged power cell.”
I see the world in jewel tones. I hear it amplified. I taste it as rancid or ambrosia or something in between.
And I am circling because I don’t know, if this is all because I am flawed or if I am made precisely as I was meant to be for whatever purpose it is that I am being midwifed by others here in the world, others of my own kind who are created also of peculiar materials.
Perhaps this is where I am meant to be, with people who understand me when I speak, who comprehend the voice of a bard. But if that is the case – what does it mean for my family? My genetics? The people I love?
I know they love me. They just don’t get me.
And so now you are all in the loop for why I am circling; lost at sea, so to speak, about my purpose as a writer. A minor identity crisis between what I am told about myself versus what I believe I am.
My voice and my honor are tied to my writing. If it’s not truth then what is it? Whatever it is, it feels absolute, like I have to choose one or the other. It’s likely not, but it feels that way right now.
And I am sitting on the inclination to cut loose that which holds me back. The crazymakers, the shamers, the ones who don’t have eyes to see the vibrancy of a color like “scarlet”.
If the legitimacy of my voice is intact, and I conclude that my honor is not faulty, then I will embrace the life that comes from being made like an odd duck.
To be fashioned of strange materials.
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