How Words Have Put a Spell on Me in Personal Essays

“I put a spell on you ‘Cause you’re mine”

From: “I Put A Spell On You”
(originally by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins)
covered by Annie Lennox

Words have put a spell on me since I was four years old.

I would open up the Webster’s dictionary my mom had in a regular cardboard box. I would stare at the words, and sometimes, pictures would accompany those words. The first word I would always encounter is “aardvark.” My four year old mind really couldn’t comprehend if I would ever see an aardvark because I lived in middle South Georgia. Would this black Southern four year old female ever, ever see an aardvark? Older Sophia can tell you that younger Sophia was more interested in how the characters in that word connected with that picture. Yet, I don’t think four year old Sophia made the connection or the possibility of us seeing that aardvark…because aardvarks are found in northern and western Africa.

But you see, that is why words, language, sentences, stories, books, and ideas put a spell on me. And for a long time, I didn’t understand the spell that they put on me until I learned how to cast my own spells on them.

Language means everything to me…and many other people who are in the reading and writing zones. What you need to know about me is that books helped me through my most challenging, dark, and difficult times in my life. When I thought I felt like a misfit reject, books made me feel normal. Very normal. It easy to escape into other characters’ worlds and relate to those characters’ lives. What was welcoming is I was allow into their worlds without feeling like the outsider. There is a beauty about being the accepted outsider. For me, it is an actual participant in others’ worlds, and what the beauty of it is, they are neutral about it which is a welcoming and accepting feeling.

Books helped give me order when family home life was chaotic. The order books provided was a sanctuary for solace. All the stirring emotions within me that were negative and complicated were soothe by the authors’ I read. The arguments between my mother and me were horrible. She said very mean comments about my father. She would retort that I was just like him. It eroded my self-esteem and self-confidence although I knew I was meant to do special things in my life. However, there were times when I doubted my talent or wanting to be a writer because I felt like the torture of where we live and how we live would overcome me. I fought and fought internally not succumb in making choices like my mom.

Yet, having books along with me throughout my life changed my life. Deciding to get a BA in English and going for a MA in English changed my life. As always, being an English major was a tough choice. I always felt inadequate about my writing, and I definitely felt inferior. While classmates of mines I admired made As, I struggled to make Bs. In some ways, it was a re-education of becoming a writer. Reflecting on it now, I was a sloppy writer and reader. I wouldn’t take time to read my assignments or really delve into writing them well because, with the amounting evidence I had, I focused largely on writing in Open Diary. All I cared about in college how I wrote, but I never made the connection to writing the way I wanted and how to adapt to writing assignments.

And that’s why there is a thesis hanging in the balance. Once again, I tried to adapt to how to write a thesis by literary standards by combining my own interests…and I got stuck. I tried to finish it and get it over with it like I did with all of those college English assignments, but it backfired.

When I look back as well, I have to cough it up to immaturity in how I see writing and understand what writing was. Now, I have a more profound understanding of writing. I know I can finish my thesis now. It’s been a long time coming. This degree has been ten years in the making.

And now, I want to write my own story…and I’ve discovered in order to write your own story you must discover the truth about your origins. That’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been trying to discover the truth about who I am. It starts with my family.

The desire for writing, the desire for reading…the overall desire knowledge cannot just come out of nowhere. No, it comes from somewhere, and I need to find where. I am cut differently, but it comes from the same cloth that my family members and me are cut from. I already got some of the story, but I want to know all of it. I want to know where I come from. Great novels comes from the love affair of the author who knows who they are. Sure, I can write a fictitious tale now, and I will start soon on that. However, the type of novels I want to write, well, I want them based from my life. Great inspiration comes from your own life. For a long time, I didn’t think my life was that interesting or worthy of being interesting. Now, I know better. It just as interesting as everyone else’s lives in this universe. I owe myself…and even others who are readers/writers to write my story. Our stories are important because our lives are.

And I believe that long ago spell that words put on me…well, it is a positive mark. The only way I know to understand myself is through words and reading words.

Cheers,
S