The Alchemist

I have begun to write my memoir. Normally I would expect to hear the scuttling sounds of family running for cover, but I’m pretty sure they don’t read my blog.

It has taken me a long time to get comfortable working with the material of my past. I once referred to this process in therapy as exhuming the bones from the shadowlands of my psyche. The first time I told one of my stories in therapy, I had given my therapist notice beforehand that I would be discussing something big. This was after a year of working together. At the beginning of that session, he unwrapped a fresh blue stick of putty and handed it to me. “Feel free to make something with this,” he said. And so for the next 45 minutes, I spoke and worked the putty with my hands. At the end of the session, he looked at me silently with watery eyes. “You are a storyteller,” he said. I asked him if he was okay, and passed him the blue putty. I had brutishly crafted a roundish blob. He held it up and looked at it curiously. “What shall we call this piece?”

I heard a quote today by Mary Karr, that writing a memoir is like knocking yourself out with your own fist. After a few hours of giving myself a good bruising at the laptop, I have asked myself why I must tell these stories. I also wonder if I will have to atone for any damage that doing so may cause others. But my heart says that this is the path I must follow, to bring the bones into the light. It is the way of the alchemist, to turn base metal into gold.




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