Helena Sharpe

WordPress tells me to “share my story” here, and I find myself upset by this instruction. “Share my story” sounds like a natural endeavor, easy as breathing, simple as following directions in a recipe book. Isn’t this the greatest challenge of all, and to be perfectly honest, impossible?

My story isn’t a story, but rather a sequence of disjointed moments, strung together haphazardly, interspersed with memories. Time shrinks or grows but mostly barrels forward blindly, while attention, ever drunk and anxious, flits about implacably.

Reality is not narrative. All writers know this and for some, if not all, of us, it is the reason to write. To live in a place where the events of characters’ lives are organized in some way (which we know, though they may not), a place where attention is always controlled, and where there is beginning, middle, and end.

How dare WordPress suggest that the moments of my life could possibly be organized into something cohesive or meaningful? I could share someone else’s story. I would assume and presume until a narrative emerged. I would not need to consider the rambling stream of their consciousness, the duality of their intentions, the confusion and lack of direction. In short, narrative is meaningful; reality is not. Life is complicated, inconsistent, paradoxical.

Here is where I find that Idealism will peer at me pointedly from her home inside my heart. I sigh, and ignore her. She is kind, but untrustworthy.