In this powerful writing by one of my students, she explores how her stories about herself both sustain her and pull her down. I have highlighted the passages that, in particular, relate to memoir stories - but overall, as she is working her way through writing a book-length memoir, Christa is also re-considering all of her life stories, related to the memoir or not. This kind of inherent crisis around life stories is pretty much a given in memoir writing, and a big part of why we need to Do It Together, not alone.
Her visceral, physical writing is super powerful - "quicksand," "tangled tendons," "waterlogged wings." What direct physical ways to describe the experience of one's mind!
What I want you to know is that while this was written from a place of and a moment of deep despair, Christa has strong resilience and belief in the power of getting the stories through and learning from them. You can especially hear this towards the end: "Why the commitment to misery? Meaningless misery." She finds the light readily, regularly, and so even when the quicksand takes her down, she can still see a way through, even if it is not able to be articulated at that moment.
Life Raft by Christa Bruhn
What keeps me afloat? What air is beneath my wings? My story is like quicksand, pulling me under, and yet I still breathe. How is that possible? What on earth sustains me? My story criss-crosses through my body like tangled tendons. I stretch as best I can but get no relief. There is no letting go when the tissue has already grown in and around these tendons. There is no untangling them. I am left with limited movement, labored breath, heavy, waterlogged wings that simply cannot fly.
