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Becoming Known 
by Kendyl Gurren

I read The Bell Jar when I was fourteen, and I remember being touched by the story of this young woman’s pain. However, it was not the plot itself that had such a profound effect on me. What shook me at my core was Sylvia Plath herself: particularly, her willingness to write such a sensitive narrative that moved me so deeply. Though this novel is suspected to be partly autobiographical, truths of Plath’s reality can be found between the lines; everything writers pen comes from personal experience and emotions, the things we know. The fact that Plath wrote about her character’s turbulent mental breakdown and recovery betrays that she felt those same raw and real emotions at some point, and to say those things aloud must have been taxing. This was the first time I truly understood the vulnerability involved with writing, how it begs us to divulge who we are on a level uncomfortable to most. The idea that someone would be willing to write the things they think and feel in the most secret parts of themselves was difficult for me to comprehend, and I gained a profound respect for writers for doing something I could never imagine doing myself.

This experience revealed to me how much of our identity writers must infuse into our compositions in order to create compelling works. By bearing all and being vulnerable, writers present who they are both to their readers and to themselves. The Bell Jar helped me recognize that there is a cycle of identity entailed in writing. This cycle explains the process of how writers and their works act upon each other recurrently; that is, we write what we write based on who we are, and that product then shapes us in some way, so that the next piece we write is now influenced by the effect the previous piece had on us and changes us in a new way, and so on and so forth. During a writing class my first year of college, I stumbled upon a piece in which Kevin Roozen explores a parallel idea, speaking to how our writing is informed by our identities and ideologies, as well as how our writing in return alters our identity. In “Writing Is Linked To Identity,” Roozen argues that as much as our writing is a reflection of us, we are also a reflection of our writing (51). Through this craft, writers reinforce what they already know about themselves while also exploring their values and beliefs more fully, allowing themselves to both comprehend and cement their identity. As a writer myself, I have encountered this cycle in writing, with the most poignant step in my development having occurred rather recently.

I first confronted this phenomenon when I was a senior in high school, only months away from graduating. Throughout my educational career, I had always been known to be a “good” writer; all my teachers praised my papers and for their wit and I always earned excellent grades on my writing assignments. Naturally, then, I signed up to take AP Language and Composition, assuming it would be enjoyable and easy enough. I was right that I would end up loving the class, but I could not have been more wrong about it being a breeze. I was aware of the rigorousness of the course and figured it might drive me to become a better writer, but I was unprepared for the ways in which I would be pushed beyond my limits. Specifically, there was one assignment that thoroughly rattled me and has since shaped me as both a writer and person. My teacher came into class one day and announced that we would be creating portfolios composed of essays written in different modes. Up to that point, we had only really written practice essays in preparation for our culminating exam, so I was especially eager at the opportunity to write something other than that. Then, the bomb: she said our first assignment was to write a personal narrative that we would then share with the class. In that moment, I could feel myself being catapulted out of my comfort zone and into dangerous territory.

Though an ardent and seasoned writer, I still had reservations about my abilities in some realms of writing, and I didn’t necessarily enjoy all modes. Namely, I hated narratives. Absolutely abhorred them, to be more accurate. I can still remember the first time I had to write a narrative. I was nine, and I struggled to tell the tale of my short lived second-grade basketball career. I just couldn’t quite comprehend what could be so important about my experience that I needed to write a whole page about it. In those moments of strife, my distaste for personal narratives was born and continued to be fostered by the numerous attempts at writing them I was forced to make throughout my primary English education.

Back then, I didn’t quite understand why detailing my feelings about something as simple as playing a sport felt so daunting to me. But now I recognize that I had developed an aversion to narratives because they are emotionally demanding. They force me to consider myself, my emotions, and my experiences on a deeper level, and not only do I detest that, but I am also petrified by it. When I read Kevin Roozen explaining that “writing also functions as a means of displaying our identities” (51) and saying that, through writing, we are reinforcing our individuality and developing a sense of self even further, I found the words to explain this feeling. By refusing to commit to paper the pieces of myself I feared most, I spent my earliest years as a writer fortifying my own fear of vulnerability and maintaining a closed-off identity as a person.

I have never been a particularly open person. At least, I was conditioned not to be from a young age. If there was one takeaway from my childhood, it is best summed up by the words of English novelist Ian McEwan: “A person, among all else, is a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.” I realized the truth of this sentiment fairly early on in life, I think much sooner than one should have to. I grew up in a very emotionally volatile household: my mother, a fiery woman who felt snubbed by too-soon marriage and motherhood, and my father, a man born to run and with a penchant for excessive drinking, fought brazenly and often, to my chagrin but to no one’s surprise. Between my parents’ open animosity towards each other and my younger siblings’ confusion, there was not much room left over in our little home for my feelings. Any attempt to share my pain was shushed by my mother telling me that I was being whiny, and wasn’t it selfish to cry when I was meant to be the oldest, when I was meant to be strong? And there began my tight-lipped philosophy on life, too scared to share my emotions for fear I would be shunned, or worse, made to seem small.

Carrying this fear with me throughout my early life, there had been many things I’d adapted to avoid including close relationships, therapy, and, of course, narratives. Anything that could end in me crying or confessing my most-inner thoughts was an absolute no-go in my eyes. So when my twelfth grade English teacher presented this personal narrative assignment, I was disturbed. How could I recount personal experiences when I found that so many memories tended to leave a bad taste in my mouth? Moreover, my teacher hadn’t told us what kind of story she wanted us to tell, so I was forced to ponder an even wider variety of recollections and relive even more complex emotions.

To put it simply, I was stumped. I sat staring at my computer screen, a blank document glaring back at me. And then I sat some more, and some more after that, trying to think of anything but my past. And, before I knew it, the deadline was approaching and I had nothing to show for my sitting and evading. Eventually, I knew I couldn’t keep avoiding the paper, and went to my teacher for some direction or even some clarification on what kind of narrative she was looking for. She gave me probably one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard in my life: “the thing you are most afraid to write—write that.” And though she admitted that she had borrowed the phrase from a poet, I was convinced that at that moment she looked into my soul and saw those words inscribed there.

Before this, I was always afraid that by talking about things from my past, they would become real, and when they felt real, they could hurt me. I believed that the less I thought about them, the less power they had. I thought that I could shift my memories into a realm adjacent to reality, where I could know that they happened, although maybe to someone who wasn’t me. But when my teacher said that to me, I realized just how wrong I had been. No matter how far I ran or how expertly I hid, my feelings were going to catch up with me eventually—I couldn’t hide forever from the ghosts of my past anymore. And so I sat down again, but this time I wrote about the one ghost from my past I’d never been able to shake. Though the event had happened six years prior, I had not cried over it, or at least not until I wrote that paper. I didn’t know what to do with all that emotion, so I just kept writing, until I wrote what I consider the best narrative I’ve ever penned. It was cathartic, but also terrifying. When it came time to read my paper to the rest of my class, I cried once more. My words and tears poured out until I felt like every feeling I had ever felt, every person I’d ever been, was lying in a puddle on the linoleum floor.

That day, however, I understood that there is strength in being vulnerable. Though I felt like a formless, shapeless thing, I had also never felt so real, so much like me. Through writing, I had not only begun to shift my emotional ideology, but I had also been able to connect with a part of myself I’d previously preferred to distance myself from. I thought I had been racing away from specters of my history, when what I truly was outrunning was a form of myself I desired to ignore. Roozen also writes that “the act of writing, then, is not so much about using a particular set of skills as it is about becoming a particular kind of person, about developing a sense of who we are”(51); in writing that narrative, I was able to encounter this form of development Roozen describes, getting to know myself better and coming closer to the person I want to be. I also realized that, although some people will be unkind and careless with the pieces of myself I share with them, most people will choose gentleness with others. Moreover, as a random girl in my class reached over to grab my shaking hand during my reading, I recognized that all people need people. While I spent most of my life shrouded from myself and others in fear of being ridiculed or rejected for the tides of emotions that rocked me, how many attempts at connection had I missed out on? Too many moments of love, I assumed, had been lost to unfounded fear, and I resolved to do my best to lose no more.

When I began writing this literacy narrative for one of my college courses, I asked myself this guiding question: how have I become more comfortable with the vulnerability that writing demands? The honest answer is, I don’t entirely know. I don’t know how to make giving parts of myself to this craft any less daunting, or how to come up with clever ways to describe that feeling of brokenness dwelling in my diaphragm. Even when given this assignment, to draft a literacy narrative detailing a part of my journey with writing, I cringed a bit. I’m still terrified someone will see me as a snotty little girl who should “suck it up,” or a material thing that has been torn and clumsily taped back together far too many times. What I do know is that these feelings never really go away. I have harbored these emotions as long as I can remember, and I can’t envision a life where I don’t. However, I can decide how much I let them make me afraid to be human, how much they make me spurn the touches from the hands of others. I am ripped in a million little places, and so are we all; there’s no reason to not let others see what they know to be true.

I’ve realized that being vulnerable in writing makes an author more engaging; that is, through writing honestly, they foster a sense of trust between themselves and the audience, urging the reader to feel more secure about interacting with the work in a personal way. The reader is then hopefully able to find something they can relate to, something to resonate with and learn from in the plight of the writer. In this, both writer and reader are reminded of their humanity and the way in which this connects us all, and they can then remember they are never alone in their emotions. Openness offers us many benefits as both writers and readers, if only we can find the bravery to participate actively in our humanity.

I mentioned before the cyclical nature of the relationship between writing and identity, that writing forms who I am while I am simultaneously making my writing what it is. Author Tony Scott mirrors this concept, saying, “Writers are not separate from their writing…rather, writers are socialized, changed, through their writing…”; after having written that piece, I have little choice but to believe in this cycle. From writing the things I am afraid to, I have not just been forced to write more relatably, but I have also affirmed to myself my fortitude and humanness. To this day, I often think about what my teacher told me and I still aspire to adhere to it. I can’t say I embrace narratives with open arms yet–there is still that lingering fear of my weaknesses being known and turned away from that I don’t believe will ever leave me. However, I can attest to my growing comfort of vulnerability and willingness to write about the events of my life that haunt me: I’ve started to share my poems with my friends, I write letters to my loved ones, and I started journaling to be more honest with myself. Though still timid, I was even able to push myself to share the first draft of this paper with a friend of mine. Instead of disregarding me or invalidating my feelings as I foolishly worried he might, he told me that it was brilliant and beautiful. He even asked me more about myself and my story and let me share some of the less digestible parts of who I am with him. It was one of the first of many moments of connection I hope to have over my writing now that I am growing to be bigger than my fear.

After writing that narrative, I found the courage to share it in my admissions materials for college, and additionally I was able to pen an essay about my inner struggles with failure and perfectionism. Those pieces coupled together resulted in me earning me a significant scholarship. When I received the call, I was commended for the strength I displayed in being so vulnerable in my application. The entire call, all I heard was my teacher’s voice repeating that quote in the back of my mind, an echo of the person I was becoming calling out to me.

Works Cited
“Writing Is Linked to Identity.” Roozen, Kevin. Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2015, 50-52.

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Kendyl Gurren is a sophomore studying at Miami University with majors in Professional Writing, Psychology, and Education Studies. Aside from writing, she is also passionate about mental health awareness and plans to become a counselor for children and teenagers after college.

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