The Black and White of It All

Jay’s eyes misted over as they moved back and forth like a typewriter over each line I wrote. We were hanging out, of all places, in a church parking lot, drinking forties and snorting coke. But something had come over me when Jay began talking about his sister who was only a year younger than him, about how much he loves her and how he doesn’t know what he’s going to do about her cancer. I parted from the group with my notebook in hand, and wrote a poem about life and death and love and hope, inspired by Jay’s heartbreaking situation. As the words flowed from my fingertips onto the paper, salty tears also flowed quietly from my sad eyes, creating mascara tinged sunburst splashes on the page. A warm summer breeze dried my cheeks and forced deep breaths of sweet air into my cigarette smoke-filled lungs.

I never really showed people I didn’t know very well my work; the things I wrote were usually much too personal and revealing. But the distance in Jay’s eyes remained even when I had pulled myself together enough to rejoin the crowd. I pulled him aside nervously.

“Here, I wrote something; it’s kind of about what you’re going through…” I mumbled, already embarrassed by my boldness to assume he’d even care. When he finally absorbed the last line, the guy who most people would be afraid to fuck with had damp cheeks as well. Suddenly, his arms were around me, tightly. We stayed like that, in silence, for a long time.

I didn’t always communicate hopped up on cocaine and booze in dark parking lots. I was one of those annoying little babies that never stopped talking, one of those toddlers that everyone smiles at while secretly fantasizing wringing their necks in the movie theater. You couldn’t shut me up if you promised me the world. I’m told I had my own language and knew my name at six months, and by seven I associated English words with people and objects. My first comprehensible word came nine months before I learned to walk, and I formed complete, coherent sentences by the time I was nine months old. By eleven months, I dictated every possible thought that entered my head.

For as far back as I can remember, my fascination with books and knowledge could never be satiated. I loved the classic bedtime stories such as Goodnight, Moon and The Bernstein Bears, but before I was even able to read these books myself I yearned for greater substance. The first adult book ever read to me impacted me so dramatically that I only went back to children’s books to learn how to read, and not for the stories.

Though my mother instilled her creativity and expressiveness in me, it was my father, the entrepreneur, who gave me my sense of adventure and wonder early on. He read from Solar Systems every night, after he magically unknotted my wild, wet hair—a job only he knew how to do without making me scream in pain. (He was an expert from all his hippie years with his long, outrageously curly ponytail.) The huge book about outer space included pictures, like the children’s books I was used to, but these were photographs of planets and sketches of real solar systems. It was not the bright, dramatic planetary photographs or brilliant depictions of supernovas that drew me in, however. It was the dizzying, tiny text, that foreign mass of shapes and symbols, that captivated my attention.

At four or five years old, I began to understand the insignificance of Earth in the universe. I began to imagine what the many other likely civilizations, hidden in the night sky, might be like. I would cry myself to sleep sometimes because knew I’d probably never live to see anyone, much less myself, visit another planet. But the worst part was realizing that humankind would likely never come into contact with any other civilization in the universe. I felt a tremendous sense of loss, finding out the truth about life: No, not everything is possible—all because of one book. I realized the power of words before I even knew how to write anything more than my name.

It seems ridiculous now, that a kindergartener could grasp concepts like infinite space, or the minute span of a human life in relation to Earth’s age. To be honest, it’s still all pretty baffling. But my brief brush with philosophy and physics found within a book peaked my interest. What more could I learn?

By the time I reached second grade, I was a bona fide bookworm. My parents gave me a journal, and I faithfully logged in French toast breakfasts and school bus dramas on a daily basis. Though today it is hard to decipher, my first journal is an interesting and comical display of my earliest efforts to communicate with limited spelling capabilities.

It came to be a nightly occurrence: the bellowing voice of my father would echo in the stairwell leading up to my bedroom, “LIGHTS OFF!” He had a tendency for shouting ten times louder than necessary when he wanted to make a point. Five minutes later, when the sliver of light peeking out below the bottom of my door had not disappeared, I could always count on the ear-piercing whistle he made with his fingers. He was sneaky and quick, always forcing me to crouch next to the door, book in one hand and light switch under the other. Somehow, I always managed to get caught hours after my bedtime, in the middle of a frantic scramble to jump in bed. During close calls, my heart galloped at full speed, and I would forget to breathe until danger had passed.

When I entered junior high, my thirst for books almost completely vanished. I never pinpointed one true reason that I stopped reading for pleasure, but my connection to the written word was never broken. Instead, I began developing my skills in poetry. I found solace in being able to express, with such precision and clarity, emotions that I barely understood. Between heart-crushing crushes and frugal friendships, I had much to let out; writing my exact perception of things made me feel more secure and confident about myself and my thoughts.

By now, I was on to my second and third journals—which had more accurately turned into diaries. I began to write only when tragedy or romance hit. These were the chronicles of an angst-ridden pre-teen trying to fit in. Trisha and I would pass a Steno notebook back and forth on a daily basis. It was brimming with secret crushes, gossip from dances, weekend plans to play Spin the Bottle and Truth or Dare, and scandalous slander about girls we didn’t like. And these were still my innocent years.

Ninth grade, fondly known as “the corruption year” among friends, signified a turning point in my life. I went from being the cigarette-experimenting “rebel” in my relatively nerdy, smart group of friends to the young girl ready to try anything, anywhere, with anyone. I sought to shed myself of my former identity. I was miserable being the frizzy-haired girl with braces that was as invisible as the air circulating through the school’s hallways. I was depressed, and like most fourteen year-olds, misunderstood. When the opportunity to change arose, I seized it.

I threw myself into a dizzying world of drugs, alcohol, and older guys. I snuck out through my second-story window countless times to party with skaters and stoners, and ravers and speed-freaks. It was a colorful, vibrant world, not bland and boring like my old life. I felt alive, and for the first time, desirable.

I wrote all the time. I carried my battered spiral notebooks everywhere, recording revelations and insanely original ideas, philosophizing on the world with acid in my spine and ecstasy on my tongue. I began to see the beauty in everything, and my dilated eyes were wide enough to let the world inside. Perhaps I sacrificed brain cells, but in doing so I gained a completely new perspective on life. The laughter, though not as gratifying as my drug-induced thoughts, was also a major factor in my repeated substance abuse. I was sick of writing lyrics and poetry about my pain and sadness. I essentially went back to my childhood and brought back my lost sense of urgency to discover and explore new worlds and ways of being.

Like my eight year-old self, the sixteen year-old me was still an expert at breaking the rules and even more talented in getting caught. When the first pillars of my world became to crumble, I knew I could hold on to my sanity as long as I held on to my pen. I dealt with severe clinical depression by writing poetry and prose, and my diary grew increasingly morbid and depressing. When I landed in the adolescent psych ward for two weeks, I thought I was done for. I could only use a pen under supervision at designated times, but I felt the need to write constantly in this secluded, sterile, blank environment. The worst setback for my trust in writing came the day I met with my parents in the small hospital conference room.

The head ward doctor and the psychiatrist assigned to my case were also present the moment my explicitly detailed diary was placed on the table. As it sunk in that my parents searched my room for my deepest, darkest secrets, I became nauseated. As if having my parents read about how I sold acid (a felony), about my explicitly detailed first sexual experiences, and having a year’s worth of lies to them revealed wasn’t horrifying enough, they highlighted the most disturbing passages for the doctors like it was research for a term paper. Needless to say, that was the last diary I ever kept.

Though the exploitation of my deepest emotions and most private and sacred experiences deeply scarred my trust in brutally honest writing, I continued writing from personal experience in more discreet language. I made it through the rest of high school largely due to my “bullshitting” capabilities in essay writing, and left my best work to torn leaflets and hidden floppy discs. But all along, even when I didn’t yet recognize my own career ambitions, I knew I could write.

Though school had never done much for me, I elected to write for the school newspaper to see what academia would have to say about my work once I could write what I wanted. Johnny “Bad Boy” Baynes—what he wanted his students to call him but they never did—was my journalism teacher, and he provided exactly the type of guidance I needed to blossom as a writer. Very little.

He didn’t nag. He didn’t look over anyone’s shoulder. But Baynes did require that story ideas be approved by him, and he always allowed my controversial topics challenging school policy and authority. Ironically, Baynes was also a presiding judge in a neighboring town. But because he had faith, and came to know, that I could present news-worthy situations and issues with tact and sarcasm, I was published weekly. As expected, most of my articles landed on the “Opinion” page, but Baynes showed me how to use my passion and fury to produce quality, satisfying pieces.

Expression on the page has always played a huge part in my development, but I have utilized writing in extremely different ways at different points. I absorbed knowledge, spelling, and grammatical skills by reading. My parents’ encouragement to keep a journal when I was young made writing a habit. Unfortunately, keeping a journal came back to kick me in the ass, and the same people who got me started writing a diary forever scared me away from it in the end.

Whether my pen scribbled prose, poetry, or reality-based fiction, I ultimately wrote for personal therapy. Writing is the only type of self-medication my parents ever approved of! From my own experience, I know that words have a way of flowing when you’re upset, and raw prose often unveils self-truths and realizations that you’d never have seen if it were not on paper. Writing helped me through life; it has been a source of healing, of pain, and always of expression. Now I am determined to use my own words to help others in far worse situations than I ever knew existed.

So now I type away, the Dean’s List student hell-bent on graduating Summa cum Laude with a writing degree and a minor in sociology. Every day I learn about more victims of social injustice who need the silence of their suffering to be broken. I hope to let their voices be heard.

Every few years when I run into Jay, we exchange typical formalities. But every time, right before we part ways, he mentions quietly that he still has that poem I wrote hanging on his wall, over his bed. Being a gifted writer is one thing. But having the power to give hope, to create light in a dark world, is something I’ll never take for granted. I’m determined to use it.