Annie's+Page



** O **** h **** ! **** T h e P l a c e s  **
 * W e F a l l **  media type="file" key="oh! the places we fall, FINAL.mp3"

I believe in my own clumsiness. Toes nicking curbs, gray scuffs on all my black shoes, mysterious pen marks on fingers, and coffee stains on my white coat define me. In middle school basketball practice I learned that if you didn’t fall during a game, then you didn’t play hard enough. In the real world I know I’ve played hard because I’ve fallen enough for eight broken bones. I am one of the many who have slammed my toes against the paternal curb. I used to “serenade” my father on the phone in third grade. I practiced and practiced and practiced to vocally please him. Each time he’d ridicule me relentlessly, I cried, and then I’d practice harder until I finally gave up. Me, my father, and my brother rehashed this singing exchange when my father was in town visiting a little over a year ago. He was ridiculing me again, despite the fact that I was trying to explain how hard I’d tried to please. My mind became flooded with past wounds, and in seconds I went from extremely hurt to enraged then blurted, “What kind of man are you? What’d you lose your left nut in a sewing accident?” I learned my words only as I heard myself speak them. The three of us were in the car when this happened. The words slipped out of my mouth and stained the silence for the full 30 minutes remaining of the car ride. My father was staying at my apartment for the trip. We went to bed that night in oppressive silence. Nothing was ever said about my comment. My father still hasn’t revisited my //faux pas // to this day. My family had great success hiding my tongue trip under the rug, but a couple of months after my father’s visit was over, I realized I had a cut that wasn’t scabbing over. I got counseling, and I wrote. Both of these exercises took me far beyond my comfort zone. With ink covered hands, I learned why I emphasized defense over offense in all my romantic relationships, I learned partly why I am an extremely empathetic person, and most importantly I learned to never stop singing, writing, or falling because self-knowledge can be gained in unpredictable places from a beautiful tune, to the poetic splattering of a hand that’s not afraid to get inky, to an accidental slip of the tongue. My bruise-covered path of self-knowledge has no ending point and should not be tied up in a neat, smoother, swanker, stride. I take my self-knowledge with me into every fall, but more crucially, it helps me get back up. When I stumble, I’m even sometimes graced with the ability to use my self-knowledge to prevent the fall. Embracing the messier aspects of life is something I do almost automatically now. I still wear black shoes, they’re still covered in gray scuffs, I still write about matters I don’t think I can handle, and when I bought my white coat I enjoyed thinking about all that’d I’ll spill on it. I know I’m strong enough to fall into the flawed fluidity of experience when I’m flaunting my coat of clumsiness. It’s exciting to think of the places these falls will take me.