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Even thinking about finding “one’s” voice make me anxious. I am afraid of what my voice might reveal about me and “who I really am”. I can barely conceive of what that might look like. My truth is always shifting. On the other hand, I do know that I have kept secrets and that I still keep secrets, which have made me someone who is not always a truth-teller. I feel guilty about some secrets, for others I simply feel regret that I have carried their burden for so long.
Even as I write this, my voice wavers. Would my voice reveal how much my secrets have cost me? Would my voice hint at something that would make people see me differently? The essay speaks of a voice that people “like”. I am forced to ask what if they don’t like me? And then I ask myself why do I write? I want my readers to like me, to like my voice. So much is at stake.
Even if I comply with all the first rules; tell my unique story, avoid platitudes, refuse to be heroic, go for clarity and certainly show my uncertainty, the problem still terrorizes me.
When I was a little girl, my friend reporting back on the school medical exam said that the school nurse had told her that she could always tell a happy child just by looking at their feet. I was thrown into a state of terror. If the nurse could tell that much from just looking at one’s feet, then what might she tell from a total physical? Would she be able to see that I was a child marked by sin? That I had been born out of wedlock ? Would she see my invisible stigma? Now I wonder what could people can tell from my voice?Even though I have told my birth secret now, I am still afraid of disclosures I can’t control. How should I speak? The question of which voice is the right voice is complex. Can my child voice live with my now voice? We are after all still one. Will my child voice still lie for my father? Like Scott Russell Sanders, my father drank too much. Too much for his own good and too much for ours, my sister, mother and me. I know that as an adult and I knew it then. Yet as a child I loved my father when he sang to me after a few beers. Even now, I can still see him handsome and singing, “everybody loves somebody some time, everybody needs someone who cares…” until he either forgot the words, or grew tired of himself and would finish in mock seriousness with, “you can stuff your Christmas pudding up the old man’s shirt” only to break into laughter and show his brilliant smile. I thought he was just great. My mother by then already hated him.
It seems as if I circle round this narrative. I’m biased, sympathetic and at times angry. I hear my mother’s voice, my much-elder sister’s. I hear my own. Where does one stand? Who is there to tell my part in all this? Is my adult voice reliable? The essay suggests looking at where one’s “I” stands. Where in relation to the action can I be? Perhaps another voice who can argue both sides. Perhaps this points to the problem when writing about difficult personal topics. As the essay comments, “they can only tell the truthfulness of the relationships as they remember them” (64). I find this idea comforting.
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