"What do you have to eat?" the boy asked.
"A pot of yellow rice with fish. Do you want some?"
"No. I will eat at home. Do you want me to make the fire?"
"No. I will make it later on. Or I may eat the rice cold."
"May I take the cast net?"
"Of course."
There was no cast net and the boy remembered when they had sold it. But they went through this fiction every day. There was no pot of yellow rice and fish and the boy knew this too.
I think we all do this sometimes. When reality is a little too painful, we engage in a little storytelling to make life a easier.
Think about it. When you're on a new diet, you try to convince yourself that the shredded cauliflower flakes taste like mashed potatoes. When you're performing a mindless task at work, you listen to music and suddenly you're back in the high school gym, dancing with your friends. You lose people you love, and you swear you hear their voices calling you from another room.
Stories can be vehicles of healing. At times in my life, I have dealt with incredibly difficult personal issues. I walked around for months holding these troubles close, not talking about them, putting them in a drawer, closing the drawer, and pretending they didn't exist. Not the healthiest coping strategy. It was only after I started talking, sharing my story (with family, friends, therapists), that things got better.
Today was sane. I hosted my book club this afternoon. We talked about Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land and ate a lot of good food. Then, in the evening, I led a poetry workshop. My son and wife attended, along with some other poet friends. I got to write and speak my truth.
My son isn't going back to school tomorrow because of the threat of a possible fight. He's got one more day of not worrying, of being himself, before he heads back into the war zone of his school life. Over the last five or six days, I tried to give him ways to deal with bullies and negative impulses. Of course, it would be so much easier to keep him home for the next two weeks. But I'm not going to make that choice for him.
On Tuesday when he gets to school, he will meet with the school superintendent, and my son will tell the man his story. There will be power in that for him, hopefully. Perhaps a sense of relief. In the big picture, it will make no difference. The school has already taken away experiences that my son will never regain. I can't change that.
BI know things are going to get better. Not tomorrow. Not the next day. But I'm going to keep telling my story, and my son's story. Because there is power in narrative. In voice.
Say it with Saint Marty: "Once upon a time . . . "
I have told my story in 2 books and a body of visual arts work. IT IS HEALING!
ReplyDelete