Story

I’m still absorbed in story. (When will I not be?) I’ve spent the past week listening to different people’s stories, in one way or another. People from within my circle of friends, people I’ve happened upon during my day to day activities and others who have intentionally sought me out to listen to them professionally. All in various states of happiness and unhappiness, some content, others yearning for something more. And all with a common thread to their stories:

What has been told is sacred.

Last night I finished reading This is Not my Beautiful Life by Elly Varrenti. I know Elly, who heads up the Professional Writing and Editing course where I’m studying. Well I sort of know her. I’ve met her a few times and had a couple of conversations with her on campus. And she signed my copy of her book at a recent book reading.

But I feel like I’ve known her for ages – after reading her book. After hearing her story.

It’s a no holds barred story. And it’s transparent. Sometimes you feel like you’re listening in on a conversation you’re not meant to be privy to. As if she’s in the room next door, confiding something deeply personal to a friend, with the door closed; however the walls are paper-thin and you can hear every word. You try to concentrate on something else, but the story is so compelling, so honest, you sit absorbed. It’s so unlike your own – you sit gob-smacked, trying to place yourself in the story, trying to replicate the experience. But the story is also your own, somehow. You know this because while you listen, tears well, your chest hurts, your stomach churns and you belly laugh till you ache.

The story-teller has made herself vulnerable by allowing you into her private world. She’s let you into her inner sanctum.

She’s let you stand on her holy ground with your shoes on.

There’s always a risk with telling a story. It may be rejected because someone doesn’t want to hear it. Maybe it’s too confronting. Maybe it contains a truth that has been hidden or buried for so long, it’s ceased to exist. But then someone resurrects it. And someone else is forced to face their shame or regret or guilt or longing or grief or —

And then there’s the risk that there will be no audience for the story. That it won’t be heard. Or understood. The story teller can feel like someone has poured acid over their manuscript, watching in dismay as it disintegrates in front of them, in a pall of fumes. But this is an illusion. The story exists. The story teller’s experience is authentic.

And a story can be true without containing facts, as in Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried. The author uses his own name for the main protagonist and it feels like his account of O’Brien’s experiences in the Vietnam war are actual events. The book, however, is a work of fiction. The story, none-the-less, is full of truth.

And we all know that a story can contain facts, but contain anything but truth.

What about the stories that never get told? The thoughts that are never expressed? The feelings that are never shared? Who hears these stories? God? The great listening ear of the Universe?

A story can be long, with chapters and sequels. Or as short as a sigh. A mere puff of air.

Here’s a hotchpotch of stories I’ve never told. Some are like the sigh I was talking about – just a fleeting thought or impression —

The time I climbed a mountain with my young children, when we shared our exhilaration at seeing the awesome view at the top, and a friend’s child who was with us pulled a pin out of his pocket and jabbed it into our bubble by declaring, ‘It’s nothing special – it’s just a view.’

Holding our cat, Minou, as he died in my arms. The way his head rolled to the side when I changed positions.

Laughing till tears coursed down my face and I became too weak to tip my head forward after I’d thrown it back in a delirium of cachinnation, when a close friend described how one of her sisters wee-ed in the lolly container, one night, instead of the makeshift potty, on a camping trip.

Taking refuge, as a child, in a Jehovah’s Witness children’s book about happy families – I don’t know where it came from – whenever Mum and Dad had a quarrel.

Lying in a bath with no water, wishing the world would go away.

Catching the look on the Principal’s face when he overheard one of his staff members mutter something cutting about him to a colleague.

Turning on my first transistor radio – a Christmas present when I was about thirteen – to hear the radio announcer say, ‘…and welcome to anyone who’s just turned on the transistor they got for Christmas.’

Being frustrated that I couldn’t tell my mother about all the people I’d met from her past – the names of whom would have made her eyes light up – after I attended a funeral: hers.

The feeling of utter abandonment the first weekend my children spent with their father after we separated.

Sharing an ‘in joke’ with my daughter, one day, without words.

Going to the drive-in, when I was seventeen, one balmy summer evening, to see Wuthering Heights and being reminded of Wuthering Heights every single balmy evening ever since.

….story.