Consequences #15 — Barbara

Words are like friends to me. They smile at me from street­cars, greet me from the white­horses on the lake, and wink at me from the side­walk. And they make their pres­ence known in the most des­ol­ate and lonely of places, offer­ing inspir­a­tion, com­fort, and cath­arsis. When I can rely on noth­ing else, I know that the words will be there.

I was in grade three when I first real­ized that the words were hanging about wait­ing for me. Dur­ing our ‘cre­at­ive period’ in the midde of the after­noon, we were instruc­ted to go to the writ­ing box and select one card prin­ted with a story or poem idea and trundle off to our desks in the hopes of cre­at­ing a mas­ter­piece. When I sat down, I was sur­prised to find the words fly­ing around my head, beg­ging to be the next one scrawled on the page in my less-than-perfect pen­man­ship. Words were every­where, and I couldn’t get them out fast enough. I would use up three, four or five cards dur­ing a ses­sion, and I wor­ried about get­ting to the end before the school year was over.

The cards ran out, but the words didn’t.

I wrote short stor­ies and poems every year after that. The words were my refuge from my awk­ward­ness and shy­ness at school, allow­ing me to tran­scend the res­ult­ing bul­ly­ing I endured for years. The words liked me; they picked me first for activ­it­ies. They swung from the mon­key bars and grinned from the hopscotch lines etched on the pave­ment. And they fol­lowed me on the bus to junior high and then to high school, where they were needed more than ever.

Words have always been with me. They’ve pulled me through some tough times and served as a monu­ment to some incred­ible moments. They have lent them­selves to hun­dreds of poems and other cre­at­ive endeav­ours, but also to essays, speeches, and let­ters — all of which I’ve kept.

Even in the black­est moments I have felt them there. Even in the dark­ness they wait for me.