“What happens when you die?” the counselor asks.
It was a question posed to her, years before, when another learned of her written volumes filled with private thoughts and dreams.
“I don’t know,” I answer. “I never really thought about it,” the same answer she gave then.
“Are there things in them you would not want others to see?”
I know my answer—the same as hers back then.
“Are there things on those pages that would lead others to think less of you?” she asked further.
I do not speak, but think: Yes, but there are others, too, that might lead another think more.
We all have our spirit-spectrums. Some of us, for whatever reason within us, trouble to write them down. Some wavelengths we shine to the world. Others, we hide even from ourselves.
Instead, I answer with a story.
“It reminds me of a part in East of Eden,” I speak recalling, “when Steinbeck tells of one of his uncles, the one fullest life and secretly wrote poetry, who oscillated from a high of almost-holiness, before falling back to spirit-emptying benders until the last of its fuel burned out, then began again in a lowness building back to high. He, or something, changed; and there became a point when he could no longer rise from the low; and he burnt all of his written words, leaving only an ashen heap, before taking his own life (I tried to find the story as I remembered after, but I struggled for the passage. Maybe I changed and intertwined pieces, as happens when we retell, more than read, the stories we remember; writing in our own parts not even knowing that we do to better explain what in us we seldom tell).”
“But you don’t want to kill yourself…” the counselor interjects, rapid and pointed, measuring mindset and safety toward self.
“No, I don’t want to kill myself,” I affirm. “It was just a story yours helped me remember,” I say. Most of my life, at least that of it I share, is but story that appears and asks me, patient, for its telling; and that I tell this one then, maybe that means something.
I’d already thought that story through, never writing to completion; and there are some stories—no matter how once seductive—whether finished or open-ended, one should never touch again. It is unwise to challenge God, the Giver and Rescinder of Inspiration, and his determinations over fate, even those as simple as “story.”
“Maybe I’ll burn them one day,” I think and speaking on (the same as she considers toward her own), “then again, maybe I’ll just leave them there, growing on a shelf so that, should someone of my blood—after—ever want to read.
It probably isn’t even legible, but if they can interpret, maybe they’ll judge me for the better…Maybe they’ll judge me for the worse. Either way, they’ll gain better understanding into who it is I was: soul within, not outward life milestones. To capture this, isn’t that why we write?”
She listens, and we hold silent—two introverts finding natural comfort in spoken conversation with another like ourselves, understanding something of the other by admission to our own eccentricities.
*****
Soon, I will be thirty-eight. Written volumes on a shelf still grow. Maybe I’ll still burn them, but today, I believe I’ll let them be. Writing is something I have loved ever since when, as quiet boy, I discovered I could tell a story and convey emotions—truer and far more interesting than I could ever speak off-hand—if I thought then troubled to write them down.
Soon, I will be thirty-eight, and still I write.
By writing, I have forged and sustained friendships. Writing, I have lost others.
I’ve made connections, some real and others mostly imagined (like the stories that I tell, even those that turn out true)—connections in spirit that gift brightness to my life.
Writing, I learned of myself. I learned, through years of creating across my spirit-spectrum, that I value and care less each day to judge another and that I wish others only well. I learned to accept not all see or seek the same. I learned good intentions can be wrong, and that some wrongs, in certain circumstance and time, can still be right. Such are but paradoxes to the infinite contradictions and mysteries that are Creation and life lived in spirit.
I learned world takes on hue of the life-lenses through which we choose to see; that life rarely goes as planned, but a beginning plan gives any starting hope a greater chance—even when that plan is nothing more than to hold open for the receiving and following of Inspiration as It shows.
I’ve lived, perceived, written, shared…but mostly saved away. Maybe that will change.
I look at the journals on a shelf. Maybe I’ll burn them still, but I believe I’ll let them be.
The less I care for casting judgement, desiring instead to see and learn others true, why should I trouble today on behalf of mine in a future when I am gone?
Don’t overthink it.
They’re all just stories—whether true, false, or beautiful blur that is something in between—beautiful fictions of a true-lived life.
Today, I believe I’ll let them be.