beautiful monsters

Pieces

Exercise; Write 3 versions of the opening of your autobiography. These versions should be distinctly different in some way.

(suggestion of abuse in (2) - nothing explicit)

(1)

There’s so much I want to fill you in on. I guess I should start with the funeral. We played Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins, and everyone sat in a circle so no one would have to turn their back to the coffin. It must have been late June, winter. Heather says it was hard to explain everything to me, she didn’t have any nice stories about heaven to comfort me with. She says I started sucking my thumb again after the funeral, and carrying my cuddly blanket around. She had to replace the satin ribbon around the edge because I wore it out running it through my fingers.

There are loads of photos – adored only child and all that. My curls grew longer and darker, by the time I started school they were brown. There’s a picture of me on the first day, with my socks pulled up to my knees and a bright yellow school bag. Heather says I didn’t even look back.

I loved writing, even then. I’ve got some of my stories, mostly deeply moralistic, heavy with themes of peace and conservation, even animal rights. The same hobbyhorses I ride today.

But the first poem I had published was a letter to you. I wanted to let you know that we hear echoes of you - as though your footsteps are just beside me. Sometimes I listen to the concerto over and over for hours. Running the notes through my fingers. Sucking the comfort from them.

(2)

Perhaps it would be easiest to start from that day, and work outwards from there. I don’t even know the date, although it’s one of my few actual memories, a brief snapshot, like a scene caught by a flash of lightening.

It was rainy that day, but not stormy. I was wearing my baggy Levi’s with daises painted around the ankles and the button up fly. (That means it must be after Steph arrived. I must have been 12, maybe 13, but I’m guessing).

The rain, and the jeans. The rough texture of his shirt. Drawstring. Naked skin. Pain.

There is that split second of realisation, in the middle. Before that second there is the past; that happened to someone else. After that second, everything disintegrated.

(3)

My life began at 3:34pm on Sunday July 27 2003, aged 22 and three weeks. I know people throw around phrases like “life doesn’t begin till 40,” and no one pays much attention because they’re just being cheesy and metaphorical. Other people claim to have had a spiritual rebirth, a new beginning. That’s not what I’m talking about. I started to live just under a week ago. Sure my heart was beating and my lungs were sponging up the air for a couple of decades before that. But they don’t measure life by the heartbeat these days – doctors can keep your heart with machines for years after the life has left you. It’s the mind they’re worried about. Consciousness, awareness.

For 22 years my existence consisted of dislocated images, like stills torn from a film and thrown together piecemeal. I existed trapped in the present moment, with no grounding in the past, and no view to the future. I had no sense of my self existing from moment to moment, no sense of who I was over time. On the outside, I could go through the motions of living, but on the inside, I was empty.

If I were to write an autobiography that started from my childhood, I would piece together my life from photographs, letters, and stories told by friends and family.

If I were to write an autobiography based on my experiences, I would start last Sunday. I curled up amongst the stones on Moa Point beach, and I cried.

Posted by Fionnaigh at July 31, 2003 12:35 AM