Strike a Prose: Autobiography

Strike a Prose: Autobiography

Written at a Strike a Prose workshop, inspired by Un/Seen at National Portrait Gallery by Ken Gonzalez Day and Titus Kaphar. Prompts chosen by Willona Sloan

Autobiography 

My job is part teacher, part counselor, part cheerleader. Your story matters, I say; your voice has power, I repeat. Yet, it's a challenge to tell my own. Standing to speak, mouth dry, sitting to write, fingers suddenly cramped. Here it is: I have dealt with Some Shit.

My Shit may not be as violent, as oppressive, as traumatizing, but still, it follows and clings, changing the shape of my brain all the same. 

I had, for a while anyway, two parents. Two is not always better than one. I had boyfriends but there are times when it is far better to be alone.  

And while we had food and clothes and a roof- I didn't have to duck beatings- I learned that words leave a different kind of scar. The kind that doom you to future mistakes, force you to recreate the same ill-fated scenarios that make you defensive and defiant and hard edged, even when all I really wanted was some someone to say "You are OK. This situation is not." 

When my father passed, his outward anger directed inward, I struggled to tell the story. He died, I yelled at a bill collector in a fit of rage,sick of their persistence. I am fucking sixteen years old, leave me the fuck alone, I yelled, fully embracing his anger, encoded in my DNA. 

I struggle to tell this story, even thirteen years later, even at a walk, surrounded by moms and husbands and little girls like me with the same experiences: a person who loomed large, for better or worse, simply no longer being. 

I struggle because its hard to reconcile the man who bounced me on his knee with the man who barricaded me into my own house- no longer his- until my mom finally came home. And then the police. 

I laughed then, at fifteen, telling my mom I was destined to be a writer, because only a writer would find humor in this trauma. 

I struggle because he left me, once, twice, many times, before he left for good. Because he could be cruel and kind. Because he hurt deeply. And mostly, because this legacy- these god damn contradictions- is what he left me.

This struggle too, is a gift, and it shapes my power.