The opposite of me
What could possibly be the opposite of me? Our next writing group involves writing a story from the perspective of someone who we are absolutely not and I’m having a bit of a hard time with it.
I’ve had a few suggestions of specific people who are not me from friends, but not any specific characteristics that I could create a totally fictional person from. So, my exercise for today is going to have to be digging into the world of self-awareness and the thesaurus to see what I think I am and am not.
First, my own descriptive words. One would think with all the Facebook quizzes and introspective blogging that this list would emerge easily, but I’m feeling decidedly un-self-aware in a very self-conscious kind of way. And now here is me getting over it because I have to get this story done!
I am…
opinionated
reflective
outspoken
generally good
smart
funny
occasionally daring
loving
intuitive
clear in my beliefs
Okay! So that means that I am not:
indifferent
unthoughtful
shy
vicious
dull
serious
timid
mean
calculated
uncertain about what I believe
That sounds like a very unsavory character. Maybe I should take a cue from one of my favorite books, Confederacy of Dunces, and try to turn an unsavory character into a comic anti-hero.
Every time I tried to create the “opposite of me” character up until now, it was always such a downer. The voice I kept creating was so mean and intense, adding comic circumstances might be just the trick!
Of course, the other challenge for me with this assignment is that I have to write a fictional story. Although my group-mates are all fiction writers, I’ve been gleefully culling from my own experience to create descriptive non-fiction creative essays. Now I have to fully engage my imagination. Good thing I got back into practice using it throughout Italy a few weeks ago!
I had also kept going to the obvious opposite for my previous attempts at this character – male. But now, looking at the traits that are emerging and imagining them in a woman is really appealing. I wonder what her name will be…
On the other side
So, here I am – two weeks into married life, back from our Italian honeymoon, sitting in my office trying to sort out what I’ve learned. I was told it would be a lot different here, on the other side of marriage. Maybe that comes later. So far, it’s been mostly the same.
We talked about that one day, when I’d asked Jack if he felt any different. He thought maybe we didn’t because we’d been behaving as though we were married from very early on, when we realized without ever saying it that we’d be together forever.
So, the other side of marriage hasn’t been too different after all – not yet at least.
And on the other side of our trip to Italy there seems to be more. Though both of us have been abroad before, it was our first time in this place, our first time speaking a foreign language when we could or had to. Or first time taking a long trip abroad just the two of us, so that we weren’t influenced by people different from us, or a big group. We let Italy wash over us, we made mistakes and learned from them, we relaxed, we never over planned.
On the other side of Italy, I’m wondering about the way we live – in our hurried manner, in our frenzied way – eating lunch at our computers and trying to just get dinner over with.
I recall noticing so many times pairs of people, two young women or a couple of old men, perhaps, standing on the sidewalk engaged in a long conversation, groceries laid down on the ground because they had been standing there a while. Cigarettes burned down to the filter, dogs asleep at their feet.
On the other side of Italy, I want to live as though I were always there, with dinners that last for hours, and siestas in the afternoon, 3 week vacations, and time to chat with friends on the sidewalk.
Slowing down made me take more time to look around and, in doing, find a number of people who have informed possible next characters for writing group. I’ve seen in a new way the benefits of living like an artist.
On the other side of Italy, I am feeling inspired.
Creating White Space
A funny thing has started happening. I’m not sure if I can relate it to cabin fever, or the fresh start of a new marriage, or my magical new chiropractor, but I’ve been having the urge to clear things out. To de-clutter. To create white space.
Maybe it’s the fact that none of the clothes I wear actually come out of my closet, but instead come from a separate nook in my bedroom. Same with the shoes. Maybe it’s because I’ve been enjoying the clarity of one writing assignment at a time instead of the overwhelming idea of writing EVERYthing down. Maybe it’s because we’ve had moving on our minds as we prepare for Jack to get accepted to grad school.
Maybe the reason doesn’t matter. And I should just de-clutter that concern right out of my head.
So, how does this all relate to what I’ve been writing? I recently read an article by a friend about finding a job for her actual self, instead of the the image of herself that she created. And I found it incredibly inspiring. As I sat down to begin writing the second story in my writing group series, I realized that I was already struggling with the image that I’d created of myself as a writer within that group.
In an evening of dark and touching stories, mine was lighter, and funny. But for my second story, even though I’d found a photograph to write a story about, and was truly inspired, I struggled with the idea that the story I had in mind would most likely not be as light hearted as the first, and wondered if that would now be expected of me in the group. One story and I’m already cornered into a single point of view.
But as I started to write, and took my image of myself as a writer and as a member of the writing group out of the equation, I realized that what mattered wasn’t me at all. It was the story. Sure, writing group is about getting responses to what you’re writing, but certainly not about getting responses to who you are. My opinions of my group members didn’t change based on the stories that they read.
When enough is enough
I used to think that to be able to write, a person had to be totally suffering. You know what I mean – the sad alcoholic eating pie alone for dinner and then getting into a fist fight later on in the night. And I did some pretty good suffering, relatively speaking, during my early days as “a writer”.
I also got very little written.
And, I think I’m proving that theory wrong pretty much every day these days, since I’ve been writing more than ever before and I’m about as happy as a person can get, relatively speaking. I’ve still got issues, but they’re everyday normal person issues, not Hemingway-type issues. And the fact that I’m so happy in spite of them makes them count even less.
So, the new theory is, well-adjusted = good writing. Or at least writing.
The less misery I gather around me, the more free I am to write. And I have been actively letting go of the misery. Are there people and incidences at my job that bother me? YES. But I’ve been practicing detaching myself from those things and people and I’m happily getting through my day. I call it “being a book”. Like a book, I’ll be there to give you the information I have, but also like a book, it doesn’t affect me one way or the other what you choose to do with that information.
It’s very freeing. It’s how I feel about people in general who take up a lot of energy. I’m here if you want to see me, but I’m not going to go out of my way to let you suck me dry. And voila! A happier life. And one spent taking up far less time for a low return on my investment.
Sound lazy? Or cold maybe? It could be, but the people in my life that remain in my life get even more love and attention and it’s of a higher quality. Including me. Finding myself as a writer, trite though it may seem, did involve finding myself first. Suffering might make for a good story told in a bar to a group of suffering people, but I’m looking forward to what feels like the next step in this evolution – a good story. Period.
Is that your story or mine?
Who owns an autobiography? Assuming that your life includes other people showing up here and there, how can you claim a story as your own?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the ownership of our stories recently because I’m getting married soon, and my own personal narrative has grown increasingly complex. My married life won’t ever be my own, it will always be ours, I get that. What’s been an interesting development during my (our) engagement is the crossing over of my parents’ lives into mine, and the role they see for themselves in my pending nuptials.
A little background – my soon-to-be husband could be defined as a Socialist and I a feminist. Based on our philosophies alone, we’re an unlikely pair to marry in the first place – patriarchal institutions and all of that. When we decided to get married, there was no proposal, just an agreement. That’s an alarmingly rare thing, I learned, still to this day.
Based on our non-traditional ways of being as individuals and as a couple, there was no way we were going to have a traditional wedding ceremony. Enter my parents. We wanted to run off to Italy and marry there. When I told my mother, she cried.
Instantly – instantly! - this aspect of my life became affected by people other than just Jack and me. My story was no longer my own. No matter what our choice, my life would change because of what my parents thought, felt and wanted, and in turn, so would Jack’s. We chose to compromise and get married in the States at City Hall with just our parents’ present, honeymoon in Italy, and allow my parents to throw a party for family and friends upon our return.
As a result, our relationships with each other have been affected. None of the things we’re doing are what I want, or what Jack wants, they’re close, but not what either of us would have chosen. This is especially compelling to my ideas of autobiography because what we are doing does not perfectly define the way we perceive ourselves as a couple. This intimate relationship we’ve created has gone public, and the way people see our marriage will now forever be associated with an Italian buffet at the Elk’s lodge. Quirky? Sure, and that’s a part of who we are. But we wanted to be wildly romantic, and, ultimately, private in this particular moment. At the same time, I love my parents, owe them my life (several times over), and appreciate that they want to celebrate my “finding a nice man,” as my mother said yesterday.
As an autobiographical writer, what does this blurring of the lines of ownership mean? What rights am I allowed to make public any story? The ethics of autobiography may be baffling now, with just my parents and my future husband, but what about when children eventually come along, too? Does my perspective alone allow me to put into the public sphere stories that include people other than me? If so, how far can I go?
