Dis(tress)patches from the Archives

I have this habit of thinking in third person.

“As she adjusted some more books on the shelf, the framed picture caught her attention and she wondered how it could ever be that her eyes had once looked so bright and innocent.”

I don’t know when it started, but sometime during my coming up I began to describe the situations around me as they unfolded—to myself, in my own head, as a witness.

I think it developed from all the books I read. I think it developed as a necessary device for a kid who always spent more time in her head than out.

Now, I think it’s a coping mechanism, or a subconscious escapism. Either way, it somehow gives me a momentary disassociation, or perhaps a hyper-association that quickly displaces the me.

“She shut the door behind her and scampered to her bed, a sense of defeat in each step. The warm damp air of another summer night flowed through the window and she knew she would somehow have to force herself to sleep. She lay in the soft lump of her blankets distracted by thoughts of just how many crickets chirped from below…”

I write this way too. Even when I tell my stories, sharp memories that still make me feel the way they did when they happened. Sometimes I wonder if even my tendency to turn my “I”s into “she”s and “we”s is not a good enough disguise. Its like maybe I don’t know how to belong to a story in a way that doesn’t betray it. That doesn’t betray me.

“A loud, clunky bang below suddenly seized the moment, and her eyes darted up from the page. Heart banging out of her chest, the book fell to the floor as she stood up to throw herself against the door.”

Truth be told, I don’t even want to be in the stories.

(2014)