No, it’s more the question I’ve been asking myself lately as I sit here looking at the blank screen day after day, realizing I feel I have nothing of worth to write about. “They” say to write what you know – and I wonder, yeah… but what is that? What do I know? Except that’s not really what is being asked, though, is it.

Everyone who has lived, loved, worked, thought knows something. Very few get through life completely untouched by some sort of knowledge – no matter how debatable that fact seems when you come across certain people.

What I am really asking myself is “How much are you willing/have been willing to share of what you know?” And the answer to that, if I am being honest, is often “very little”. There are people who I’ve known for years – friends! -  who know virtually nothing about me beyond what is in the present because other than cute little reminisces of this and that, I don’t talk about myself (even though it seems like that’s all I do, sometimes).

And why is that, I wonder? Is it that I fear being cast out of some community of people who’ve lived “normal” lives with storybook childhoods? I don’t think so. I’ve lived long enough, and listened and read enough to know that storybook’s are often incomplete. And my life, my world, compared to some has been downright boring. So, it’s not that.

I think it’s habit. Mental illness is much more understood these days, but as a child with a mentally ill mother I learned early not to talk about myself, to keep my own counsel, to protect and deflect, to seemingly answer questions and then immediately turn the focus back on the questioner. This is not hard to do, as most people love to talk about themselves, to be understood, and I love listening to other’s stories (most times). This trait would make me a pretty good chronicler of someone else’s life, but it makes for being a crappy witness to my own past.

So, what to do. My mother said something the other day – just one word, which I don’t think she realized she said and which I plan to write about later, that made me realize how much of my reticence is about appearances, about race, expectations and just plain old habit. And how important it is, for me as a growing writer, to get out the crowbar and start prying open the vaults – filled with little enough though they may be.

And yes, I know I’ve said before, in one way or another, that I was going to do this, to open up, but I think I had to get to a place of understanding, first, why everything was closed in the first place.

Now that I’m starting to do that, to understand the why’s of silence, I think I’m about ready to begin to tell tales.

[image at top is my mother, me and one of my brothers. Where my other brother was during this photo is a whole ‘nother story to tell.]