Now I Become Myself
by May Sarton

Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!



I am ready to stop the sun.

On my trip to West Virginia, I not only found my mom a job and a new place to live, I also found one of the faces that I had left behind. As I visited with friends who knew me before I left academia, before I became a mother, before I divorced, and before I faced the worst in my ex-husband. I didn't know how much I had changed until I saw myself through the eyes of friends who had known and loved me. To them, I was still that same person. A woman who founded a women's studies program, organized faculty, students, and community members to fight against mountain top removal, to support a rape crisis hotline, to elect strong political candidates, and to fight for many other causes. A woman who believed that through the sheer force of her will she could make the world a better place. A woman who believed in the basic goodness of humanity. An idealist -- with a powerful left hook-- her mind -- which people never seemed to see coming.

I was once a person to be reckoned with.

I wish I was still that person, but I am not. The strangest part of this is comparing me now with that woman then, and seeing how much I have lost my voice. In fact, I know it is a miracle that I am still writing anything, given what I've been through in the last year and a half. If you've read my columns and my blog, then you know something of what has happened, but you only know a small part. I haven't writtten, have hardly even spoken (besides the bare facts) of the other events in my life, when I had to face the worst in my ex-husband, and through him, seen the unsayable. And I can't write of what I have seen and heard and felt, for two reasons.

First, is legal. I am involved in an ongoing legal battle to protect my daughter, and I can't reveal information about the case. The second, is emotional. Ii hurts too much to write it. Maybe some day, when this court case is over and my writing is no longer being monitered by people who would use what I write against me, then I will tell it all. Many writers face an internal censor that says, "that's not good enough." I have that censor, plus another one: "If you write that, could it put your daughter at risk?" Each word I write must battle its way past this powerful censor. So, as I said, it's miracle that I have written anything at all.

But as I look back at the writing I have done the last year and half, I wonder. What could I have said if I hadn't felt hunted? If I hadn't felt like a liar for writing around what should be said? If I haven't felt a choking grip around my throat?

After an inteview with journalist Claudia Brinson, I told her how I was struggling with what to publish, how much to reveal, what to say. Claudia came to speak in my women's studies classes when I was in graduate school, and is someone who I admire like I would a former professor. No matter how old I get -- or anyone gets -- we never stop being the students of teachers we loved. So, I listened when she talked. She listened to my worries with patience, but when I had talked myself out, she looked straight into my eyes and said, "The truth is never easy." Then, she left. I have remembered what she said.

I need to tell to truth, even if it's only a small part. And someday, I will tell the whole truth.

You know, I am beginning to see some of the old me.