A short story by Lillie George, Co-Director
The door slammed shut and I was standing there in my bedroom, alone with the boiling rage and sadness and shame that kept inching higher within me until my hands trembled and I tasted salt. In my young, disorienting anger I managed to grasp hold of myself enough to notice the ballpoint pens and notebooks strewn across my desk. I gained control of my shaky hands and picked up my favorite magenta pen, letting the internal current guide it across the paper.
It was the first of many letters that my seven, eight, nine-year-old trembling hands would crease and slip carefully under my family members’ bedroom doors before I’d lie on my floor, stare up at the sealing and finally let myself breathe. It became a routine, a coping mechanism. The boiling inside of me would come, grow and then, with the satisfaction of seeing emotion released on paper, it would slowly subside.
As I grew, the magenta pen followed me. I wrote countless stories that centered around girls I now realize are a lot like me. I found peace in the rhythmic rise and fall of conflict and eventual resolution in my writing. All the while, my magenta pen gave the girls in my stories things I dreamt of - it took them on fantastical adventures, helped them find love and gave them superhuman abilities - it did all of this and more until its ink, faithful yet faded, finally ran out.
A black flare pen took its place, and through my middle school years, it accompanied me as I began my first journal and let the confusing thoughts and emotions spill out onto the pages. My new pen helped me learn that the names I was given could be edited, and as I reached high school, I began to scribble everything out. I underlined the word “shy”, fixating my glare on it before crossing it out in doubled over, angry blank ink. Soon, this ink covered page after page until my handwriting was no longer recognizable, not to my old friends or even to myself.
For a while, it was fun. My pen and I sailed through the first semester of freshman year in a whirlwind of exhilarating unfamiliarity. A whole new set of friends, clothes and experiences were thrown at me and I welcomed it, all the while keeping my magenta pen carefully hidden and out of sight.
It was slow, at first. It started with a trickle: a small, magenta teardrop I quickly wiped from my cheek, forcing a smile and continuing on. But the trickle soon turned into a flow, then a current, and I began to realize magenta was too vibrant a color to hide behind the dull, neutral hues I’d surrounded and filled myself with. I cried out in frustration. I wanted to destroy this hidden side of me. It didn’t blend well, it wasn’t right. I wanted to keep it hidden, I’d tried to keep it hidden but it was dreadfully present. It would always be there.
It took journal entry after journal entry for me to finally have the courage to loosen the cap, feel the familiar edges of my trusty magenta pen once again between my fingertips. The current I’d been suppressing finally burst through the walls I’d built around it, and with it, the walls around me simultaneously fell. I smiled, grasped my magenta pen and began, once more, to write.
This is a story about how, ever since I was very little, I have turned to writing as an outlet, whether it be when I am hurting or simply looking to express myself creatively. The story talks about how as I grew, I began to try and suppress certain aspects of my personality. Even then, I eventually found my way back to myself - my writing, or “magenta pen,” helped me to do this.
Comments