This is not an apology, an explanation, a story, a lie, or the truth.
This is, quite simply, a confession.
Pretend you are a priest, if you like. Or a god, if it suits your fancy. I am laying this at your feet — not for redemption, since I am not sure such a thing is needed — but quite simply because I don’t know where else to put it. Pick it up if it seems useful to you, or leave it for others to find. The choice is up to you.
But if you choose to pick it up, then take a moment to imagine this: you are somewhere in Brussels, it’s a warm day, and you are sitting outside on a set of stone steps. Spread out before you is the cream-colored city, with a long formal garden rolling away into the distance like a red carpet. A girl is sitting beside you, holding a notebook with “Aditi’s Story” scrawled across the cover in metallic sharpie. She looks like she’s in her late teens or early twenties, with brown hair scrunched up in a bun, a pair of oversized pink glasses perched on her nose, and her fingertips stained with ink.
What makes you notice her is the way that she’s writing — or not writing, to be exact. She keeps putting her pen to the paper, waiting until an ink blot spreads, frowning, and lifting her pen up again. She does this ten or twenty times before curiosity gets the better of you, and you decide to find out what’s going on.
You introduce yourself, explain that you couldn’t help but notice her writing (or lack thereof, though you’re too polite to say it), and ask what she’s working on.
“It’s nice to meet you,” she says, pleasantly enough, lifting her pen up from yet another ink blot. “I’m working on a story for a few friends of mine…” she trails off, frowning absently at her notebook.
You wait patiently for her to finish the sentence. But when the silence stretches on for too long, you ask her what the story is about. She looks at you with surprise, as if she had forgotten that you were there. But she answers the question, all the same. "Oh, it’s about a pirate princess, but I can’t seem to get it to work. I’m afraid because—" she stops abruptly, looks at you for a moment, and then says “well, I guess I’ll never see you again anyways.”
You want to say something about this; that maybe you will see each other again someday, maybe you’ll become friends, maybe… well, that maybe no one knows what life has in store, so such assumptions mean very little. But the fact that you are both strangers for the moment does away with her reluctance to speak, and she starts talking again before you have figured out what to tell her.
“I’m afraid because maybe they won’t like it. I’m afraid because I might get stuck halfway through, and I’ll just end up getting stranded in the middle of a story that’s going nowhere, and I’ll strand them all along with me. I’m afraid because I’ve always called myself a writer, but I haven’t written very much recently, and I’m afraid that I’ve forgotten how. I’m afraid that I’ll hurt my wrists more by writing, because I already damaged the tendons by writing too much. I’m afraid to learn dictation, even though I’m trying, because what if I completely lose my writer’s voice by having to actually say everything in my speaking voice? What if my writing gets worse when I speak it, but I can’t write or type because it hurts too much?” she says all in one breath, her pen on the page again, creating the largest ink blot yet.
You are quiet, watching the ink blot spread across the page. Little blue tendrils race across the paper, quickly followed by a puddle of ink. You don’t know what to say to her. But then again, maybe she doesn’t need you to say anything. Maybe she just needs someone to listen.
“Maybe I’m not a writer,” she says after a long time. You look up from the page, to see that she is staring off into the middle distance. It strikes you as sad that she’s not even seeing the beautiful view in front of you, with all of Brussels at your feet.
“Maybe I just like the idea of being a writer. Maybe I don’t have what it takes to actually be one. Maybe I’m just too… scared.”
She looks sad, like this possibility pains her. You look at her notebook, at the puddles of ink, at her pen, at her blue-stained fingertips. And suddenly you get an idea.
You ask to borrow her notebook and pen, and although she looks surprised, she hands them to you. You dig a pencil out of your pocket, turn to a clean page, and write in neat strokes at the top:
Scared is what you’re feeling.
Brave is what you’re doing.
— Emma Donoghue
Underneath that, you write your address. When you pass back her notebook, you give her the pencil and keep the pen. You figure that writing in pencil is less permanent, and therefore less scary, in the same way that spilling all your fears to a stranger is less scary because your connection to them is temporary. You tell her that if she gets too scared to write, then she can always remember that there’s an eraser. But you also tell her, quite honestly, that you hope she doesn’t use it.
You also tell her that you hope the two of you can become friends, which is why you gave her your address. You would like her to write you a letter, you say. When she opens her mouth to protest, you point out that the letter can say anything — it shouldn’t be hard or scary to write. It could even just say “Penguins,” and that would be fine, you assure her. This makes her laugh.
Then she asks you something that catches you off guard. “Have you ever been scared?”
Of course you have. Living life, trying to live up to your dreams and expectations, is inherently scary. But you have also had more time to live with this truth than she has, and therefore have learned to trust that courage always follows fear, even if it’s a little bit slow at first. So you smile and stand up, planning to go for a walk in the garden. But right before you leave, you that tell her yes, you have been scared before. And for that matter, so has everyone else, since most worthwhile things are scary in the beginning. So, you say, you’ll be waiting for her letter.
About a month later, you find a cream-colored envelope in the mail. Your address is written on it in pencil, and the back flap is fixed shut with a penguin sticker. You work it open slowly, careful not to tear the sticker, and find two sheets of paper. On the first piece of paper, it says:
Thank you for listening.
I’m practicing being brave.
On the second sheet of paper is a story.
Curious about the photo? I took it in Brussels, Belgium, on my now-defunct iPhone 6 (may it rest in peace). Since it is my own work, all the usual copyright rigamarole applies.