My Story.

When someone asks me “So, what’s your story?” My follow up question is, “Do you really want to know?”

I have lived my life--brief in the greater scale of things, but long enough to grow accustomed to a certain way of thinking--believing that my story revolved around a pivotal point in my past. That, should I ever have need to write one, my memoir would begin describing the childhood moments that had come to define who I am. In new friendships I was awaiting the moment I could insert my past into conversation because I never felt at ease until I did--like I was carrying a secret. And in old friendships I felt as though I could never really escape the labels I had procured. I put so much focus on how my history has moulded and scarred me that I don’t know how to identify without it.

I am a middle child. A child of divorce and of loss. I was labeled with severe social anxiety at the tender age of six. I watched the painful process of illness when I was no more than eleven, and by twelve I had developed a faceless, nameless list of grief counsellors, social workers, lawyers and doctors. Because I hardly spoke, they forgot that I could hear. Every hushed conversation, every word between the lines, I let every painful remark or lack of confidence ink itself on my heart over the last decade, reaffirming my belief about who I am or all I will amount to be because of where I came from and how it affected me.

So whenever someone asks me “so, what’s your story?” My mind starts drawing out a timeline between the ages of 3 and 12-- believing that everything afterwards was a direct result of the events of my younger years. Sure, I wouldn’t be who I am today without the experiences I had, but my obstacles are not a direct correlation to my successes. My past is not who I am, it is not an explanation for the things I do, it is not a limitation for where I am going, and it is not a secret.

“So, what’s your story?” My story is on going. In fact, my story has barely scratched the first page. Consider the past as a prologue; it may stake a claim on some parts of my memoir, but it hardly deserves its own climax.

My story isn’t a tale of overcoming some great obstacle, nor is it about re-defining my labels. It’s about letting go. It’s about moving forward. It’s about new opportunities and new relationships and not being tainted by what I left behind.

I am not my past.

And I have many more stories to tell.

-Sept-Sept-Sept-Sept-Sept6