Non-factual Non-fiction

This story is not a fiction. But nor is it a fact. I have to protect identities, you know. It matters. So this story is fiction. And fact. And, as I said, neither. That’s the thing about stories, isn’t it? We are steeped in them, from before we are even conceived until well beyond our dying. Good stories of promise and happiness and love and fulfilment, if we are lucky. But always, those stories of fear and danger and the not-good-enough of ourselves. I hesitate to call them bad stories. Mostly they are only stories about safety, after all. But they are bolshie, these stories. Give them and inch and they will take a mile. Feed them, and they WILL bite your hand.

So that’s where this story starts. A story about stories? Aren’t they all? In this story, there is a youth. Being non-factual non-fiction, our youth can be without gender or precise age without any real cost. Let us call the youth “Taylor”, and let us know that Taylor is in the hinterland where childhood is past and adulthood is just around the next corner. Probably. Maybe the corner after that one. This is a great time for stories, the mind is reaching for them like a sunflower turns to the light, and yet for Taylor it is also the time when stories about elves and the moon and uniting to face down the monsters are shelved, leaving the clamour of other stories – the ones about failure and troublesomeness and missing every beat – to fill the space. Taylor knows many stories about Taylor. But in this tender time of shifting identity, it doesn’t take a lot, does it, for the good ones to quiet, and the safety stories to get to work.

“You have let so many people down, you are never enough. Keep your head down, they might not notice.”

“They know you are worthless, unless you can prove you’re not.”

“It must be something about you, all this bad stuff. Your fault. Try harder.”

“You know you’re too sensitive, you’ll never cope.”

They sound cruel, don’t they. But they’re not. These are kind stories. Stories for keeping Taylor by the fireside, one of the tribe, acceptable. Protective stories. Until they’re not. Until they get full of their own importance and shout over “You have always been loved” and “You have managed so much, and learnt so much along the way” and “Do you remember laughing?”, leave no space for “you can forge a path”, “you can hope for a future”, “you can find joy”, until all Taylor can hear are stories of threat, and inadequacy.

The thing about stories, though, is that they are rarely all fact, just as they are rarely all fiction. Is Taylor perfect? Absolutely not. Is Taylor beyond redemption? Never. But repeat a story enough times, recruit enough tellers of it, hold it up against the world and seek its proof for long enough, and it will start to resemble truth.

So here is the story of Taylor. Taylor has strayed. Where there was once a shining light of potential, Taylor has fucked it up. Not alone, of course. The world has been hard, an unforgiving melee of measurement, a constant examination. Are you clever enough, fast enough, witty enough, pretty enough. Are you good enough, bad enough, brave enough, cool enough. Other children can. Are you better? Are you worse? Who are you, child, who are you going to be? Why are you less than? But who, if not Taylor, is the culprit? A story needs a villain, and all signs point to the centre.

Taylor is bright, and clings to that like a life ring, and hopes that the rest will escape notice. Hope is rarely enough, though, and Taylor has worked SO hard to make sure the rest will escape notice. SO hard to be invisible, to protect a wounded self. So hard that when the world does look, Taylor is the vaguest outline beneath a shield the world calls illness. Taylor calls it defence.

*

“What would you like to be different?” is the question I ask Taylor. “If you were better, how would life be?”

“No-one would look at me, if I were better” says Taylor. “I could keep the world out.”

Time goes by and the story spreads its roots. Mine, about a youth who has built a shell so complete that life is held at bay. Taylor’s, about a world so full of threat that retreat is the only way.

“What would happen” is the question I ask Taylor, “If the world were to touch your skin?”

“I would break,” is the answer, “the breach would be unbearable.”

“What is unbearable?” I ask.

“I would not withstand my distress.”

The story sucks water from the soil, and the ground grows dry and barren.

“When you are free of this,” I tell Taylor, “flowers will grow in this earth.”

“I will always miss the buttercups” says Taylor, raking the dust into parallel lines.

The story is in full leaf now, and in the shade, Taylor shivers and I pace.

“Shall we put one finger into the sun?” I suggest. Taylor makes a fist.

“Shall we pluck one leaf and let a raindrop in? I ask, and Taylor sews the canopy together, sits, and turns half away.

“Look,” I say, “just look at all of that sky.” And I watch Taylor’s closing eye.

“Can you please, just, TRY.”

Taylor’s face is turned from me, shoulders hunched, silence emanating like cold from a glacier.

So I stay.

“I’m sorry,” I tell Taylor. “I’m here. You are safe.”

Taylor says nothing.

Time passes, and the tree remains the same.

“You are safe,” I say. “I’m here. And you can survive your pain.”

Taylor does not reply.

Beyond the shade the young people gather and pass in dancing groups, and Taylor remains in the dark.

“You are safe,” I say, “I won’t go. And you can weather distress.”

I stay, and Taylor stays. We stay for a very long time. The young people congregate in twos and fours and larger masses, laughing as they stretch into their limbs in the sun, shying away from the shade. I watch Taylor’s shoulders quiver.

Then one day, I ask Taylor “what would help, in this moment?”

“I would like you to help me” Taylor says, “build another layer to my shield. But that would only make my world smaller.”

And in a fissure in the cracked earth, I see - thin, sallow, bending under its own weight - a blade of grass, reaching for the light.

“Well then,” I say, “let’s just notice that we haven’t, so far, and that that has been ok.”

Time passes, and the grass persists, neither growing nor dying. We stay in the shade, and Taylor does not seem to notice the young people, learning to kiss in the sunlight.

“Do you see the birds?” is the question I ask Taylor. “Can you hear them sing?”

“I see the birds” Taylor says, and more time passes.

It should be autumn now, I think, the leaves of this tree should be turning brown and shrinking back and we should be learning how to feel the cold and still stay warm in the winter, how to make ready for next spring. What if we freeze here in the shadow? What if we starve to death?

“Do you see the bees?” I ask, “Can you feel their buzz?”

“It is the flowers” says Taylor, “which attract them. That’s why I like the flowers.”

When I look, a seam of green runs up the blade of grass, but Taylor has not seen it.

“You are safe,” I say, “you have always come through your fear.”

“If I was better,” Taylor whispers, “I would not be afraid of my fear.”

For weeks I watch the blade of grass, and I wait.

“Those people,” says Taylor, “those people are flying a kite.”

“When you are better,” I say, “perhaps you will fly a kite.”

“When I am better” Taylor meets my eye, “I might be a kite.”

We watch the plastic diamond buck and surge in the wind, its multi-coloured bunting jerking and whipping in the sky. It is buffeted hither and thither and pulled, all the while by the string.

“When you are well” I say, “you will be a paraglider. You will know how to ride the thermals, and how to tilt for home, and which winds to leave alone.”

“When I am well.” says Taylor, and I point to the green blade of grass.

There is panic, of course, at the grass, the urge to stamp it back down.

“Let the urge be” I say, “let it sit. Allow it. Observe it. Name it, give it a noun.”

“I am afraid” says Taylor. “I am afraid that my shield might fail.”

And we think about how, some time ago, we did not add a new layer.

“I saw the young people” Taylor says to me. “I’d like to learn to dance.” Then a buttercup pushes up, beside the blade of grass.

*

Of course this is a fiction, and non-fiction, true enough. The distinction is hard to make. There is no Taylor, that is a ruse, an obfuscation of truer tales. And like most stories, this one is not done. Maybe this one is only a hope, standing at a junction. Stories follow a pattern, don’t they, and somewhere, in every story, there are moments when things take a turn. We like, do we not, the stories where the turn leads towards a win? The stories of victory? The obstacles overcome for love, the criminal brought to justice? We accept the story goes on from there, but the victory is where we choose to stop, as if we can forever hold it steady. Hoisting the flag, the long-denied embrace, standing atop the peak. The culmination of smaller wins mounting on a smaller win. One turn, giving others a place in the story, and the story carries on.

But before that, one moment of realisation. That the story we have been repeating, the one that has begun to look like truth, is non-factual non-fiction. Nothing is tied down. We have choices about what happens next.