“Narrative provides a way to speak things otherwise unspeakable, to give voice to that which would otherwise go unheard” –Lynn Briggs and Meg Woolbright
Writing for Identity
A literacy narrative I wrote for class and felt was significant enough to share.
I’m six and a quarter years old. My favorite color is purple and I want to be mommy and daddy’s perfect little girl. I cry when I don’t draw the picture exactly how I want it to be. I rip it up and throw it. But it’s okay, because I can go swing in my backyard – Up, down, up down; kicking in, out, in out; soaring through the air, closing my eyes. I am anything I want to be. It’s quiet, I’m alone, and everything is perfect.
Dude, I’m nine. I want to be a sport star, but I’m terrible at hand-eye coordination, and I think I’m disappointing the soccer coach who happens to be my dad. But, I can get good grades – that comes easy to me. Quietly listening in class, I wish to be the bubbly girl next to me who the other students flock to, the girl who always has something to say.
I am the same age as my sister; well, at least for this month until she turns thirteen. I want to be her. She’s only eleven months older than me, so why does she get to be so much cooler? It’s stupid and not fair. She can play soccer, sing in musicals, and make so many friends. My teacher’s tell me I’m smart, but I just want to be accepted by the twenty-seven people my age that I know.
I’m like fifteen. I want to be pretty. My best friend knows how to fix her blonde hair and make up her face. She has a boyfriend. I want to make people laugh the way she does. I wish I could just quit being so damn shy, why don’t I know what to say?
I’m finally eighteen. I want to be an artist. I want to be the stereotypical art student – the one who does the unexpected, dresses in awesome but unintentional style with beanies and wisps of hair every which way (yet, still looking put together), makes crazy unexpected artworks, and goes to art galleries to chat about avant-garde art with other artists. I change my style accordingly.
Now, my age doesn’t really matter. I don’t want. I am. I don’t need to have some alter ego to compete with the real me. I have an identity. The reality of my entire life has been, and is, the shy girl. I participate in conversation most often by sitting back and listening, contributing through nods, slight smiles, and soft chuckles. I’m conservative and modest; traditional.
I didn’t realize this until I created a blog. In a class I was taking, Creative Strategies, one of the major projects of the semester was to create a new self – an alter ego, or our “better half”. The assignment was rather vague and obscure with no right or wrong answer. It wasn’t necessarily supposed to be an alter ego, but someone we would be, without any limitations, if we could. Our future self, perhaps. Most of the project was up to us, if we wanted a new name, a new direction, anything. However, we did have to create a profile on a social network to display our new self and provide an artist’s statement, so I chose to create a blog for my character.
Creating this person was hard for me, even though my entire life I had been creating ideal personalities for myself in my imagination. I wanted her to be perfect, to be the artist I desired to be but wasn’t. I began to create a character that portrayed the “artist” I had been trying to emanate. The more I worked through all the parts of the assignment though; I began to realize the only person I truly wanted to be was myself. That meant combining the conservative and shy “me” that I had tried to hide with the conflicting artist “me.” I worked through the rest of the project, and finally when the presentation came, I used words on the blog to explain that “I did not know the answer” to the assignment. This was extreme for me, because I had always been the student who gave my teachers what they wanted, because I was supposed to, and this answer to my professor’s assignment was definitely not what she wanted. But through my voice on the blog, I could explain, simply put, that I didn’t quite know how to define the real me yet, that there was a battle between my identities going on in need of compromise, and whoever she turned into was who I wanted to be. I fulfilled all the requirements of the assignment, albeit unconventionally, and I still made it my own.
This blog helped me define an identity for myself that intertwined each aspect of my character; I realized I didn’t need to choose just one thing to identify myself. I felt free to explore my identity. At the same time, I found that through written word I could define myself, explain myself, and have the voice I had so desperately been searching for in order to conquer my shy “self.” My shy speaking voice had somehow become bold – even loud – in written form, on my blog with an audience.
The concept of audience became very important to me. Throughout my development from child to adult, I was desperately seeking to be someone else because I thought I needed an audience. I wanted to be noticed and heard, and the only way I knew how to do that was to somehow get over my shyness so I wished to be someone else, someone less shy. With a blog though, the world was my audience. Anyone who typed in a few search terms could come across my blog and read the words I voiced. I suddenly had a place to put words that I couldn’t find a way to utter aloud, but could write. And these words were being read! This was exhilarating; I felt terrified but so excited at the same time. Here, I found that when my shyness creeps up and takes away the words I want to speak, I could voice them through writing. Blogging was the perfect way to develop this voice because I could write it, formulate my words, be confident, and know that I had an audience.
This blog was a new step in defining myself, and led to my current blog here, Arts and Tarts, which has become a place where I can and will continue to tell stories, share my baking experiences and recipes, and explore my photography. It’s a place where I can be the different aspects of my identity all at once, where I can mesh the shy with the unconventional, where my conflicting “selfs” can coincide. Because of this, it’s a place where I can completely be and voice myself.
Blogging has given me a voice. It’s an outlet to explore my identity, and continue the journey of defining who I am. Each blog post I write adds a new ingredient or instruction to the recipe that makes me, me.
And here is the newest ingredient,
Lavender Lemon Cookies
Lavender Sugar Cookie:
1 cup sugar
4 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup powdered sugar
1 cup butter
½ cup sour cream
½ cup oil
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ – 1 Tablespoon dried lavender buds*
Combine flour, baking soda, and salt and set aside. Cream butter and sugars together, add eggs and beat. Add sour cream, oil, and vanilla until combined. Slowly mix in flour, until all combined. Add in lavender buds. Chill dough at least an hour, then use a rolling pin to roll dough out to ¼ inch thick. Cut with cookies cutters. (I cut small 2 inch diameter circles, resulting in a billion tiny cookies). Bake at 350 degrees F for 6-9 minutes, or until just barely browned on edges and top is not longer shiny. Cool on wire racks.
*Amount of buds depends on preferred taste. Be cautious though, as too much may taste soapy
Lemon Glaze
2 cups powdered sugar
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
2 Tablespoons water
Zest of lemon
Whisk all together. For stronger lemon flavor, replace water with more lemon juice. When cookies have cooled, drizzle or pour over tops and let set out for glaze to dry. Store in airtight container.
Always with love,
B
Arts and Tarts 