Surviving “My Death Sentence”

Writing about the process of self-discovery that I went through was not the first idea I had for my non-fiction piece. I originally wrote a piece about the death of my parents: my mother when I was 18, and my father when I was 36. But the finished draft of that story about death was kind of dull and, if you will excuse the pun, lifeless. It was nothing more than a collection of memories that felt disjointed and flat.

So I moved on to telling the story of the birth of my niece. The interesting thing about my niece’s birth is the fact that no one knew my sister was pregnant, even my sister. She had been having her monthly period, had not gained any appreciable weight during the pregnancy, and had never felt the baby kick. So when she started to have severe stomach pains for two days, and decided it was time to go to the hospital, no one was more shocked about her being in labor than she was.

This second story also felt, to me, to be a little off. Again the writing seemed to be a little flat to me. So I decided that I needed to come up with another story.

It was at this point that I first thought of writing about my coming out process, but I dismissed the thought as too personal, too much a part of me to actually write it. After three days of trying to figure out what to write about, my mind went back to that idea, and I relented.

It only took a few hours to put the story on paper, and the finished draft was, in my own opinion, much better than my other two stories. Upon finishing my reading of the draft, fear crept into my life.

I had written a story that was so personal, so revealing, and such a large part of who I am today, that the idea of actually turning it in and letting people I barely knew read it scared the hell out of me. While everyone I dealt with on a semi-regular basis knew I was gay, none of them knew exactly how I came about accepting that knowledge about myself. This story put all of that out there. Did I really want people reading this story?

In order to come to a decision on whether or not to actually turn in that work, I sent it to someone who knew part of the story, but not all of it. After reading it, he asked me the one question that was continually running through my head – “Do you really want people to read this?”

This question would haunt me up until the day that the project was due in class, and until I was walking out the door of the apartment that morning I had still not made up my mind. I had print outs of all three stories sitting on my computer desk, and as I sat there that morning, I mindlessly shuffled the three stories, trying to keep my focus on the television. I kept the printed sides of the pages facing away from me, so that I could not see the stories themselves.

When it was time to go to class, I grabbed the first two stories in the pile, unsure of which two I was grabbing, and placed them into my class folder. Arriving in class that morning, I got out both documents, and again started to shuffle them, again not looking at any printed words. I then took one of them, placed it back in the folder, and put the folder back into my bag.

Not until I was placing the paper onto the others that were being handed in that morning did I see which story I was actually turning in. “My Death Sentence” seemed to glow at the top of the page.

Upon seeing that title, I had a brief twinge, a strong desire to grab the other story from my folder and place it on the top of the stack before they were collected, yet somehow I fought that desire, fought that urge to replace it with the other story sitting in my folder, even though I didn’t know which other story it was.

I still don’t know why I stopped myself from acting on that urge, that sudden strong desire to replace “My Death Sentence” with the other story in my folder. What I do know is that once the story was out of my hands, I was able to rationalize my turning it in. I told myself that it was for the best, that it got the whole story out in the open, even if it was only to a few people within the class.

Then I realized that there was something inside me that had been bubbling up inside of me since I was first asked if I really wanted others to read the story.

Yes, I was scared to have my story out there, to have others read it, criticize it, and mark it up, but maybe, just maybe, by reading the story someone else would not have to go through what I went through.

Maybe, in its own little way, my story might help someone else who may be questioning their own sexuality, or maybe in such a state that they think they should be taking their own life. Maybe my story could actually be like that little old lady from Wal-Mart and make people realize that no matter what life throws at them, killing themselves is not the answer.