The Truth In Personal Essay

Coming To Terms With Yourself

There’s a multitude of erasure that comes when dealing with the past. Taking a quick departure from the story of Brynn’s life, when I first wrote about leaving Brynn behind for my microbiology lab final in the end Part III, I originally wrote the whole event to play out in my favor, shifting the narrative to make me look less of a villain. This penchant feeling to make the story more lighthearted, like a happy anecdote against the pain of “raising” this furry hell-raiser. To retell this story meant hiding my hideous decisions; to hide who I was, or even more so, hide who I am now, fearful those traits still exist somewhere within the dark corners and crevices of the ecosystem of my mind.

But the truth is hard to tell,  harder to personally examine, even though it shined through every crack in my original retelling of this story, screaming for release. It’s the one thing I love about writing personal essays; it’s so much about life storytelling, but also reckoning with the past. While far from legitimate therapy, there is a catharsis in being honest with yourself, fighting the urge to change the literal narrative of your life, to whitewash the past and replace it with pleasantry. Here’s an excerpt from my original story:

“She escaped out the door, right before I had to leave for my microbiology final, and I had to leave her. I ran over to my neighbors who were home, exasperated and panicked, frantically asking them if they could look for her while I ran off to school. They were so calm with the situation, and within a few minutes of me taking off, they reported Brynn sprinted into their arms while they called her name on their back porch.”

So lovely, so heartwarming, everything ends in bliss. But this was far from the truth. 

When I initially wrote this out, I changed the narrative completely. Made myself look like I made a mistake, but was still a decent human being. How I ran over to a neighbors to have them help while I took off. The lab was changed to a final exam to add weight and justification to my behavior. But the nagging shame, of wanting to release the true story, pursued through. 

Partway through the original writing, my mind started to bump up against the reality of the story, and I was stuck. I kept pushing and pushing to find the words to rewrite the past, but I slowly began to realize what I was writing was no longer the truth, but rather complete fiction. And at some point the dam burst, and my fingers flowed with what actually happened that day, from a second person point of view:

“But this wasn’t what really happened, was it? You were so panicked and anxious and angry about missing your lab, you left her out there. In the winter cold. Alone. Because you were stubborn, she was stubborn, and she didn’t want to come back inside. You were fed up with her behavior, and you took off. You didn’t think of the implications at the time, you were so annoyed with her. When you arrived at your lab, you found your lab partner with someone else, and had the other person leave. Minutes later, you received a call from an unknown number, and you stepped out of class into the hallway. It was a neighbor, as you presumed, who called saying they had found Brynn running around, and asked why she was out there? You explained the situation, but they still seemed to question your decision of leaving. You let them know the front door was open, and they could put her inside. They obliged, but now this memory is being reckoned with.”

At points in my original writing, I began questioning my own memory. Did Brynn actually squeeze between my legs that day, dashing out the partially open door? The visual of this memory feels so clear, and so plausible, who’s to say this didn’t happen? Or maybe my own timeline is skewed, as this happened in the past, but never congruent with this exact moment of my microbiology lab. These memories and thoughts and recollections are battered up against the wall of what I knew, deep down, was the truth. 

It’s terrifying to think how easy it is to manipulate personal essays; intentionally, or not. How fallible our memories can be, easily swayed and eroded by the passing of time, of confluence with other’s recollections of the same event or time. 

Or change completely, conjured solely through a photograph, as Fleet Foxes’ lead singer Robin Peckold describes in the inner liner notes of their self-titled debut album back in 2008:

“My first memory has always been of me and my mom on a cold grey day down at some beach in Washington, along the Puget Sound somewhere near Seattle. I would be around two or three years old and we’re with a friend of mine from the neighborhood and his mom, walking around among the driftwood looking for crabs. Even now, I can remember the smell and temperature of the air, the feeling of the sand and the swaying tall grass. I can even remember looking over at my friend and how his face looked when he smiled back at me. 

Another memory that I’ll sometimes recall as my first memory is dressing up in the dead of winter as Jack London, with tennis rackets on my feet and wearing my dad’s hiking pack, in the middle of summer after seeing Disney’s (terrible) version of White Fang. Or there’s the memory of stealing my neighbor’s big wheel and riding it halfway down the block before getting caught and having to turn around defeated, or of wearing a fireman’s outfit while washing my parent’s car, or eating an orange popsicle from the ice cream truck.

These are and have always been some of my most distinct and persistent memories of childhood, so it came as a disappointment to me when one day as a teenager, I opened up a photo album and found pictures of each and every one of those memories. I didn’t have a single memory that didn’t belong to or somehow grow from pictures my parents had taken of me when I was growing up. Even the scenes I remember so clearly in my head are from the same angles as those photographs, and I don’t really know what to make of it. I’m going to guess that I’d seen all these photographs at some point, forgotten they were just photographs, and over time made them into my most tangible memories. That’s scary to me in a way.”

Robin continues on to detail how music itself is so completely clasped and tied to his memory, more so than a photograph or book or any form of media has in his life. How a song can instantly transport him back in time to a place and feeling where memory feels unaltered; impervious to the burden of the passing present and recollection of the past. 

I remember reading those liner notes over 15 years ago when I first bought the record from the Burnside location of Everyday Music in downtown Portland. I had never heard of Fleet Foxes before entering the store - the album was displayed proudly on their 8 compact disc sampling station of “Best New Music”, where one could listen to their picks before purchasing. Through the tinny speakers of the cheap plastic headphones provided, the opening folk tune of Sun It Rises spoke to me immediately, and I bought the album completely on a whim, never sampling the rest of the album.

I remember parking outside my father’s office on the corner of 1st St and B Ave in Lake Oswego, the sunroof letting the mid-afternoon sun slice through on that fateful June day in 2008. Finding an edge on the cellophane wrapped casing, I unpacked the album, laying the innards of the case on my driver’s side lap, and intently reading the liner notes. This memory feels so personal and so close to me, even recalling it now.

The “memory” of Robin’s words, the way they felt and resonated, have stuck with me, even if I could never recall Robin’s exact words if you asked me now. I would listen to the debut with jubilant repetition during those summer months working on an alpaca farm in Clackamas county owned by two retired UPS drivers. I remember driving up and down the dirt road leading to/from the farm, the dust clinging to the canary yellow paint of the Mercedes diesel, its engine reverberating off the dense forests on either side of the road… And Fleet Foxes spinning in the CD player, the sonic harmonies pounding against the rattling drone of the engine, beckoning to be absorbed and heard. 

As their sound would be, Fleet Foxes were a far flung departure from the music of my teenage years; one which was filled with intricate noise and experimentation; an over-stimulation of sorts to calm my heated mind. Fleet Foxes reflected the music I grew up on in childhood, shared amongst my parents through The Byrds, The Beatles, and Neil Young and his constituents. 

All of these events perspired before making the decision to move to Bend when August came into view. On the precipice of where days spent in the direct sun shoveling alpaca dung and the heartbreak discussed in the Brynn story originally began. 

My father left his personal office in downtown Lake Oswego a lifetime ago, yet the building still stands, though it is dilapidated and in need of repair (or demolished completely). Only a few tenants occupy some spaces, I believe; the remaining rooms are all empty, yet the sign with my father’s name is still displayed proudly on the outside, though our last name misspelled, as though a testament to my youth, and a reminder of time, on the rare occasion I pass by.

Circa 2022

The canary yellow 240D Mercedes is all but gone now, totaled, sold for parts, after a collision with a deer in Bend some years later. The Fleet Foxes CD lives amongst a collection of hundreds of other albums, tucked away safely in a garage, waiting to be transported to wherever I settle someday.

Even within these memories of listening to the first Fleet Foxes album, can they be trusted? Is this the reality of how the events played out, or is there some fluffing and embellishing of the past, to make the story more solidified and, dare I say, romantic? How do you, as a reader, know I just didn’t completely fictionalize the whole above ordeal? Truth and trust go hand in hand when it comes to personal accounts and essays, I suppose.

When these memories are shared only by myself, alone in a vacuum, with no one to back up my claims, is there more fiction to be found, especially when presented to a room of silent observers (you, the reader)? And when I have nothing but my own moral fluid obligation of the truth, how much can I, as a writer, blur the lines? At what point am I rewriting my own history, especially as I recant and retell the story over and over and over again, from my mind, onto paper. A little change here, a punchy detail there. What becomes on paper (or the screen) becomes my own memory, afterall. A game of writer’s telephone.

As a writer of personal essay, what sort of moral obligation do I have to telling the truth *exactly* as it is from my own memory? And as a reader, how much can be allowed to pass by as romanticism before you begin to ponder the credibility of the story?

I don’t have the answer to these questions, as I believe everyone has a buffer or fluidity to what they would allow for embellishment in a story. We can only strive for the truth within the core or lesson learned, skirting somewhat along the edges of the benign.

While I don’t wanna play around with philosophical questions, such as “Does this mean I cannot believe any personal essay?” I think there is something to be abound for healthy skepticism. 

There’s something to be said for a story, for the sharing of a memory, where the narrator “loses”. Where the narrator doesn’t come out scot free and clean. Everything usually plays out the way it should, where the main character wins in the end, comes out unscathed. This is largely part of the reason why pushing the “truth” surrounding leaving Brynn behind appealed to me, besides the nagging moral obligation to the reader, and myself. Because too often the reader never sees the disgusting grime, dust, and crumbs tucked behind the refrigerator. The messy reality of what’s revealed when everything is pulled back. For myself, this truth became an aching reminder in the back of my head telling me to showcase it all, shame included.

Robin ends his essay/linear notes on memory by stating, “Don’t trust your photographs”. Feels easy enough to tack on to this sentiment with, “Never (fully) trust a personal essay”; at least, sustain some disbelief when reading, like a piece of fiction.  And maybe, don’t trust your own memory; believe in its doubts and fallibility.