Introduction to an Unwritten Memoir

My story doesn’t have an ending. Since I am a person and the end of a person is usually their death, I’ll call this A Good Thing. When I say, ‘my story’, however, be aware that I do not mean “The story of me”. Rather, it is “a story that belongs to me”. By putting this story, my story, onto a page and then choosing to let that page be seen by eyes other than my own, I will be relinquishing ownership to the world. But as I write this, long before you will ever read it, the story is still mine.

I say my story is not the story of me because to try to put the whole entire story of me into words would be a Sisyphus task. Sisyphus was a Greek king who avoided death so much that when he finally died, he was cursed to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity. You may think that rolling a boulder up a hill, no matter how slow your progress, will not take eternity. You are right. But the boulder would roll back to the base of the hill whenever King Sisyphus approached the top. His is a story that also does not have an end, and since he is already dead and the cycle he exists in is a punishment, I’ll call this A Bad Thing.

Writing the story of me would be a Sisyphus task because it would be something I would never finish, and since most good stories are finished, this too would be A Bad Thing. The absolute overwhelming existence of a single life is too much for words. And I think there isn’t much that is too much for words, if you have enough time and patience and imagination to help words along.

You may have noticed I said that my story doesn’t have an ending (I should hope so, it’s the first sentence), and that I also said that most good stories are finished. Well, contrary to what it may seem, I’m not saying my story is a bad story. I don’t know what it is, frankly, since I’ve yet to read it myself. I’ve lived it, and so I’ll say it has Good Things and Bad Things. I say most good stories are finished because you can’t really tell if a story is good or bad until you’ve finished it; maybe an excellent first few chapters lead to a lazy plot twist and unsatisfying finale. Maybe a dull prologue takes on new meaning in the epilogue. My story doesn’t have an ending, so there’s no telling if it’s good or bad just yet. I don’t think I’ll end up being an axe murderer, or worse, telling the events of this story unsatisfyingly, but I can’t say either for certain.

There is a misconception that writing must be good. That is not true. Writing must only be words. Though even that is almost untrue. Because when I look out the window during long car rides, I write novels made of thoughts and conceptions and feelings with no words. What I’m really saying is that I don’t know what writing “must” be. Just not good. Bad writing is incredibly productive. Bad writing does something much more often than good writing: make it to the page. Because no matter how good your good writing, if it doesn’t make it to the page, then you can’t relinquish ownership and if you can’t relinquish ownership, then you might as well keep your writing in thoughts instead of words.

When I have been taught reading and writing, I have been led to believe there is a Right and Wrong way to read and write. This premise makes both activities incredibly boring, and even frustrating. My teacher has not met Shakespeare, nor have I. So when we read his sonnets or plays, who is to say his intentions? Who is to say what a specific line means? Shakespeare, I suppose, but then, he put his story onto a page, and relinquished ownership; now whoever reads it owns a little piece of it, and whatever they believe of it becomes a little true.

This story, my story, is not about literature. It is about me, a sort of SparkNotes version of the story of me, the story that I cannot write. I read and write a lot, however, and that is what I’ll be doing as I tell my story to you (or to myself, for you to listen in on later), so some literature is bound to leak in.

My name is Sabrina Parra Díaz. There is something about writing my name that I do not enjoy. But I like my name very much. Sabrina Parra Díaz. There’s an accent in Díaz, though it confuses people. I have two last names, Parra from my father, and Díaz from my mother. I don’t know anyone else with two last names, except for my brothers. Forms and institutions and official documents do not like that I have two last names. For many many years, I went as only Sabrina Parra, and that seems more normal sometimes, but then that’s not my name. There is a Sabrina Parra out there, probably several, and that is their name. Mine is Sabrina Parra Díaz. 

My parents are not divorced, or estranged, or anything like that. They simply grew in Caracas, Venezuela, where I think there’s less pressure for a woman to change her name when she gets married. She kept her identity as herself, not an extension of my father. I’ve always thought that was really cool. When we were born, we being myself and my two brothers, it made sense for us to have both our parents’ names in ours. That is why I have two last names. Because I have two parents. 

Let me give you my life story as I give it when a stranger asks it of me and I want to deliver it all in one breath: “I was born in Venezuela, moved to the States when I was a year old, stayed there until I was eight, then moved to Colombia, graduated high school there and went to Atlanta with my family to study Creative Writing at Emory.”

This tells you where I’ve been, in the vaguest sense. It doesn’t tell you about the yellow walls of my room in Medellín, that my grandmother had painted when my parents were on a trip, because I wanted yellow walls and my mom said no, and my grandmother had it done before they returned and as the only girl no one was upset.

That summary also doesn’t tell you about the windows. All of my rooms have had windows. I like to keep the blinds open, I always have, so the sunlight will wake me up. This also means I keep my room as cold as I can, so I don’t broil into baked mac and cheese.

Though these big events, the ones that are usually marked, will inevitably make their way into the narrative; moving, school, college, and so on, they are not what the story is about. I want to tell you about the time I was falsely accused of making fun of a teacher’s height. About being the new kid for four years. About the time I could have been a soccer prodigy, and every odd place I’ve slept in. I want to tell you the things I’m really proud of; introducing my little brother to theater, impressing a literature teacher, changing a philosophy teacher’s mind, cutting my hair, seeing the pandas, reading the first line of every Emily Dickinson poem that starts with “I”. 

I’ll also tell you how hard it is to breathe. Also, how I am still breathing, even when it hurts, and that matters.

It matters very much.