what's given
and what we take
I was a reckless, loose cannon of a teenage girl. I picked fights. I hung out with some bad people. I found myself in predicaments I got out of by the skin of my teeth. I remember my mother employing the deep freezer in the basement to lock up our home phone whenever I was grounded. The idea was to stop me from using it to arrange hang-outs with my pals when she left the house to go out for the evening. It didn’t work. The moment she left, I would break into the freezer, make my plans, and be on the public transit bus before the dust had even settled from the wheels of her gold Mercury Monarch.
There were things I did in those years that I had to carry with me long into my adult life. Things I couldn’t wrap my mind around. Things that I thought forever tarnished me, defined me. It wasn’t until I signed up for a writing program in my thirties and began to pour my stories onto paper that I found that young, lonely girl there, still waiting for me to come for her. In our classes I would be called upon to read aloud passages of her stories. At the time I didn’t know why I shared the stories I did, but now I know. She had something to share and it wasn’t for me to hide her any longer.