Chapter Text
I almost drowned once, in a river in Alaska. I swam too close to a waterfall and got sucked under. A friend’s father dragged me out by my shirt. I did not have much of a reaction to not dying. I sat on the bank with my friend and her mother and laughed, and then I was fine.
I don’t remember it anymore, the not dying. I remember the force of the water that pulled me under, the force of the person who pulled me out.
I remember laughing.
***
I have been thinking about the responsibility of a storyteller. What is my responsibility, as a storyteller? I used to think it was simple. If I am a storyteller, then I am a person who tells stories. But there is a difference between an occupation and a responsibility. If you have an occupation, it is your responsibility to do your work and to do it well. Simple work: Tell stories. Simple responsibility: Tell good stories. But, why? Why tell stories, and why bother to make them good?
After a few years of not dying, I went to college for writing. I couldn’t think of a reason not to. Part of creating my senior portfolio was writing an artist statement. My artist statement lays out the reasons I love stories, and writing, and the reasons I want to be good at writing stories. My artist statement is about me, and what I want, and what I need, and says nothing of any audience imagined or real. But, I wrote that specific story for a specific audience. I would not have been able to write that story without that audience. I end my artist statement with a question: “Is this enough of a reason?”
I know, in the deepest part of myself where it is possible to know a thing and still be capable of articulating it, that God gave me Story. Through learning to understand stories I have learned to understand people. Girl learns to be a person by choosing Story. Except I have not decided if you can truly chose something that was gifted to you. I have only mostly decided that this choice or lack thereof does not matter.
I want to be dead. I have wanted to be dead since I was eighteen. Maybe before then too, I don’t remember. But, when I was eighteen I stopped reading books.
Our name, Poet, comes from the old Greek word for “Maker.” I never understood that until I started to think of words as a material. Maybe time is a material, too.
I stopped reading books. I wanted to be dead, but I needed to live. So, I started reading fanfiction.
What do you owe to the forces that create you? What do you owe to the forces that save your life?
I wrote my almost-first story in Alaska. I don’t remember if it was before or after the not dying. It did not start out as fanfiction, but by the third draft it was.
***
I write fanfiction. I am proud of my fanfiction. Typing that statement feels like a confession. I want to be a serious writer and fic is not to be written seriously. At least not without disgust and dismissal from the wider writing world. Still, I take all of my writing seriously. Especially the fanfiction.
Currently, I have eighty-two stories available to be read on AO3. Eighty-two stories represent 598,897 words. 598,897 words does not account for my hundred-odd documents of cut scenes, notes, canon analysis, and works in progress. Three of my completed stories are novel-length. One of my earliest stories is rated in the top hundred of the hundreds of thousands published in its fandom. I have originated character tags and started fanon trends. I am not popular, but I am not obscure.
My favorite thing to do is take a nothing character and write their story. Take a face and a name and three scattered lines of dialogue and write them into a person. As I write the character and their story, I discover something about me, and my story.
Three years ago I wrote a story about a planet and a man who moves there in an aftermath. As I wrote my outline the planet became Alaska, and when I wrote the man a trip to the river, I discovered he was terrified of drowning.
***
We love the biographies of the great and the forgotten, the wise and the foolish; we want to know about their parents and siblings and childhood friends, what books they read and what speakers they looked up to and what art they collected, what history coincided with their education. Through understanding the forces that shape a person we understand the space they fill in the world. We need a structure to hold our lives, if we want to hold on to our lives.
“I tell you this story to save your life.” This is from Shape-Changer, the first fanfic in the series Double Agent Vader by Fialleril. This series is about the role mythology plays in enduring and ending oppression. The ritual response is, “I will remember.”
I am trying to write my way out of the chaos of incomplete comprehension. It is my opinion that the only forms that cater directly to this endeavor are nonfiction and fanfiction.
And so, I am trying to write a novel.
***
I want to write a novel. I do not want to write a novel.
I have a BFA in Creative Writing. I spent three and a half or six years laboring over that degree, depending on how you count it. So many people helped me survive college. Family, friends, teachers. So many people supported me, were patient with me, believed in me. I want to prove I am not wasting my degree; not wasting the time and money that went into my degree. I want to prove their effort on my behalf was not in vain.
My family have started asking questions. Don’t you think it’s time to focus on writing you can actually publish? What do you mean you don’t want to publish? How are you going to make money?
My understanding of adulthood—of personhood—is not based on age, but in belonging, and in the responsibilities of belonging. A child is welcomed into a society when they prove they are capable of contributing to the well-being of that society. An adult is someone with an occupation. An adult is someone who fulfills their responsibilities to their occupation, and to their family, and to their community. An adult—a person—is someone who has something to give.
I am not living up to my potential.
***
I would like to clarify: I do not want to kill myself.
There is a fundamental difference between wanting to kill yourself and wanting to be dead. I do not fantasize about dying. I want to be dead because I do not want to be alive; because I do not want to be occupied with living.
If I were dead, I would not have to buy food, or cook it, or eat it, or clean up the mess, or keep the food down. I would not have to sleep. I would not have to shower. I would not have to speak to people. I would not have to sweep my floor. I would not have to wash my laundry. I would not have to be on time for work. I would not have to work at all. I would not have to be a good employee, or a good student, or a good friend, or a good sister, or a good daughter.
Living exhausts me. Every day, as I go about the work, a constant refrain: I would not have to do this if I were dead.
I find this rather pathetic. Living is as simple as breathing, right? Life is a gift.
If I were dead, I would not have to be aware of my self as an individual entity, with individual wants and needs. I would not have to reconcile my wants and needs. I would not be haunted by my younger self, or consumed by questions of my future. I would not have to be here, right now, thinking about my responsibility as a storyteller. I want to be dead because I do not want to be a person.
***
I want to write a novel because I want people to read my story and think it is intelligent, so they will think I am intelligent, so they will not know that I am young and ignorant and afraid. I want to write a novel because I want my writing to be respected, valued, celebrated. I want to write a novel because I want to be a person.
***
Was I saved? Did I save myself? Or was I gifted the ability to save myself, and if so, does that still count as saving? What do I owe in return for a gift?
As an artist, what do I owe to my art? To my audience?
As a person, what do I owe to people? To God?
***
I am drowning.
Fingers tangling in the neck of my shirt, fingernails scrapping my shoulder, the water dragging me down and the hand dragging me up.
I am going to laugh about this, in a few minutes, in a few years. In another lifetime, maybe, when I can no longer remember the feeling of not dying. There is a laugh building already, sharp in my chest. I can’t open my mouth yet, though.
This is the hardest part: Holding your breath until you’ve stopped sinking and started swimming. Drowning is so easy. But you don’t get to laugh, if you die.