A Light

I dated Sarah in my early twenties when she was going to Brown and I was waiting tables at a nearby BBQ restaurant. Though I had an apartment, I more or less lived with her in her single dorm room, the two of us squeezed together in her twin bed at night. It was a claustrophobic relationship: I hardly saw my friends, I wasn’t writing or reading, just waiting tables and being with her. Being with her was nice enough, but we were both so young and she was going through a very rough patch when we found one another.

She worried often if she was good enough. She was worried that at 5’ 11” she was too tall, that her butt was too big, that she wasn’t classically beautiful enough. She felt she only got into Brown because her father was the dean, and that she had not real talent or facility for anything other than dressing well. I thought all this was nonsense, but I was only beginning to understand how impossible it was to convince someone of their own value.

For instance, she liked to record funny messages on her answering machine. She played me one she had made using the Prince song Kiss. I thought her timing and word choice was impeccable. It was like a little piece of audio theater. I, the budding artist, told her so, and she shrugged and laughed. One night she was in tears about her life, how nothing she did was good enough, how everyone was smarter and better than she. I thought of that message. I started to remind her of it – when she cut me off.

“No!” she screamed. “It’s just pathetic that that’s all you can come up with.”

I understood her shame, that in theory all I could think of was a single cool phone machine message as evidence of her talent. But even as she pounded the bed and wept into her hands, I thought, “She’s wrong. It does count.” I didn’t know how to express it, couldn’t at that moment pull her from the void of worthlessness into which she’d hurled herself, but some part of me understood that every bright, creative point of light in our life matters, that nothing was too small. In fact, just then I saw more clearly in her than I often could in myself how all the darkness she’d summoned only served to better reveal her light.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com