My Writing: This I Believe

While doing a little spring cleaning (deleting items from DropBox that are over a decade old because I will not become a digital hoarder), I came across one of the first pieces of writing I sent out into the world.

During my senior year of college at WVU, Professor Mary Angel Blount encouraged all of us youngins’ to submit our work with blind and perhaps somewhat ignorant enthusiasm. I remember learning how to format my early manuscripts, how to include a little note in the footer that said “First Serial Rights” like I was going to be somebody someday. It was exciting and terrifying…and upon reflection, I realize that not much has changed in that department. Sharing your writing with the world is still terrifying.

But….NPR accepted my essay for their This I Believe segment. I was smitten and silly with pride. It was my first win as a writer.

When Professor Blount had us complete the assignment, I scoffed – because I was still very much a bitter kid who nothing ever worked out for. But by the time I graduated college, I was different. Her gentle but tough, vivacious encouragement was new for me. She made me believe.

Unfortunately, what I also remember is that I was too embarrassed to share the essay with anyone. I didn’t want my family to see it, because it was about them, aka the epitome of this meme:

So I hid my success, celebrated privately with my boyfriend (who is now my husband, and biggest champion of them all) and a few writer friends and classmates.

I am sharing today, over a decade late and no longer ashamed.

Rereading what I believed back in 2009, I have to laugh. Not out of embarrassment or shame, but out of pride. Because I was right. Because I knew what I was talking about. Because I was learning to trust my instincts. I didn’t have the blueprints, but I had the tools. I’ve made a life for myself since that is very much centered around the idea of home, and that child who wrote that essay would be proud and at peace to know how far she’s come (and adult me doesn’t quite care so much who may or may not be offended).

The epiphany, however, is realizing that my writing, at its core, will always include a theme of survival. Underdog tales. Prodigal sons (and daughters). For my creative nonfiction portfolio to include this is one thing; until today, I had no idea that these themes made their way into my fiction work, too.

I may not have a lot of creative writing credentials under my belt (yet). And sure, I’ve got author’s envy when I see other hopeful debuts with their shiny bios. But for right now, in this moment, I’m not going to be ashamed of that, either.

I’m going to be proud of the kid who talked about finding and creating home when she had her back against the wall, and for the adult who survived.

This I Believe

“For years, all I could think of was how to get out. Straight A’s through high school, off to a great college on the west coast come graduation, a shiny college degree in my back pocket and a job somewhere in a warm city. I’d hit the open road and never look back. No one was going to stop me from running away.

There was a point in time where I hated anyone who used that term to describe my plan. They’d look me dead in the eye and say, ‘You know, Aubrey, you can’t run away from your past.’ My response was always instant: It’s not running away when you’ve been pushed out the door. And that’s how I felt. Pushed around. 

The moves started when I was eight and continued until I was 18. The summer before my senior year of high school, things got ugly. I lived with my mother then. One day we were walking somewhere along fine, and the next I was being screamed at to get out. 

I’ll never forget how incredulous I was that she pushed it so far with me, her only ally. I was standing in my room, packing whatever I could grab and stuffing it into two white garbage bags, when BAM! my door crashed open and hit the wall. She was standing there, with the cordless phone stuck to her ear, saying things like ‘No respect, no respect at all, she hurt me, she actually pushed me around.’ I grabbed the phone from her and hung it up. I didn’t say goodbye; I just carried my stuff downstairs, threw it in the car, and left. 

I joke that I took a ten year vacation from living with my dad. The day I moved back in, it was like those ten years never happened. The back yard still had the same squishy and lush grass as it did when I was a kid. The gasoline smell in the garage was still as strong as ever and my dad was just as happy as always to have me in his life.

All those times people were telling me that I couldn’t escape my past, I took it as a challenge. I thought they meant I wasn’t capable of trying, that I was weak. But now I get it. You see, home isn’t exactly a physical place. Not even close. It’s a place you hold inside of you and take with you when you run. And it can be a messy hodgepodge of everything you have ever encountered. Mine just happens to be made up of a couple different places, houses I’ve lived in that weren’t homes on their own, but when I chose to live in them and leave them, I made them mine.”

– Aubrey, Morgantown, West Virginia