Once upon a time – like five minutes ago – I had this romantic idea that trying to turn my life into a story is like sculpting a masterpiece out of marble. I start with this massive block of raw material, smash off giant chunks of it, cut off whole blocks of it, chip off decent pieces of it, chisel off small details of it, shave off even smaller slivers of it, grind off subtle edges of it, and polish it to a gorgeous shine, revealing the masterpiece that was lurking all along in this hunk of stone.
That’s such a lie.
I’ve never sculpted anything in my life. I have no idea what that’s like, no experience with it.
What I have done is open my refrigerator and try to cook food. So here’s an analogy that makes sense.
Trying to turn my life into a story is like opening my refrigerator, pulling everything out – I’m talking everything from the mayonnaise on the door to the leftovers on the top shelf to the prescription medicine in the bottom bin – pulling all that out, putting it into a large pot on the stove, turning up the heat, and then trying to remove one ingredient at a time until it’s the perfect stew.
It’s brutal. At some point, I’m calling it done, but I don’t know if that’s because it’s good or because I’m just sick of trying to make it good or, and this now seems most likely, because I’ve lost my sense of what good even means trying to fish out all this weird, stringy, sloppy, spicy… stuff.
