The Years I Was a Rug Instead of a Writer

Tread softly.

“When I first met you, I felt a kind of contradiction in you. You’re seeking something, but at the same time, you are running away for all you’re worth.”

— Haruki Murakami, Kafka On The Shore

I only recently remembered that I’m a writer. You’d think it would be unforgettable; one of those inalienable truths. Yet here I am, 28-years in, unearthing it — sleuthing off years of dirt and doubt and desecration to reclaim the title as my own. Trying it on like a new boot; flexing my toes and relishing in the gentle groan of unfinished leather.

In a way it was both starting over and returning back to the start.

My dad says I was writing before I could even read. I’d line up my dolls, fan them out into a semi-circle, open up a picture book, and write. Real-time sagas and oral histories unfolded, transforming and mesmerizing audiences of plastic. The worlds I created were indefinite and lasting and malleable, and those qualities alone gave them excellence.

The trajectory was set, but it wasn’t set-in. Being a writer asks for imagination and practice and flow, yes, but a requisite is self-belief. While my childhood was filled with “You can do anything you put your mind tos”, children watch and imitate what they see, not what they hear. Anything’s expansiveness was shrunken by real life; by 9 to 5 realities and unfinished creative projects; by stereotypes of starving artists and the practicality of having “realistic” goals. I heard “anything,” but saw “anything within reason”; saw “anything…so long as it looks good on paper.”

So I pushed writing down and away; considered it a hobby, but not a calling.

And I became a rug instead.

Jute, to be specific. Natural, soft, durable. Pet-friendly. Relatively easy to clean. Biodegradable. Replaceable.

I rolled out for abusive ex-boyfriends, silently writing poems about the wounds it would take me years to heal. Searching for purpose and finding failure; crumpling up pages in attic-bound notebooks. I worked in the college writing center, editing other people’s words so that I wouldn’t notice the saudade within my own. A professor asked me to submit a piece to a writer’s magazine. When I saw the submission rates — 5,000 entries and counting — I told her no; that it was just for fun. When she died suddenly a few years later, I re-read the piece the way you would a funeral elegy, and I cried because I hadn’t been able to believe in myself, not even for her sake.

There is a poem by William Butler Yeats that goes:

“Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet.

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

It wasn’t a pity party because the unfurling was my choice. “Don’t take off your shoes, that’s what I’m here for.” I might’ve said. “But tread softly, won’t you?”

Here’s the thing about jute rugs though — they shed.

Turns out that “because jute rugs are made with plant fibers, they become a bit brittle from being woven into knots and braids, leaving them very susceptible to shedding tiny little fibers.” Or maybe tiny little words. Here and there. Never to be fully shaken out or vacuumed up.

And now, years later, I am remembering. I am collecting the shedded pieces and tiny little fibers and weaving them together. I am creating anthologies out of a formerly-lost sense of self. I am writing with fervor; assembling words from gaping years and reconstructing them, amazed that they’ve remained and existed and endured.

I am writing.

I am rolling up the rug, hugging it, kissing it, thanking it for its lesson, and putting it away.

I am writing. And remembering.

I am a writer.