Somewhat belatedly, we are delighted that first prize for the first Storytime monthly writing competition is a three-way tie.
Last month’s theme was all the regrets I’m proudest of.
The winners were Chelsea Butler, Shadia Ousta Doerfel and Soko Fictions.
Congratulations to each of our wonderful writers!
They have shared the £100 prize between them. You can read their entries below.
This month’s theme is available to Storytime collective members in the post here and the deadline for entry is 11.59pm on Monday 30 November.
All the Regrets I’m Proudest Of by Chelsea Butler
All the regrets I’m proudest of by Shadia Ousta Doerfel
The day that Dolly died, social media was teeming with memories of someone the algorithm had forgotten to remember. Perhaps it was never programmed to even register her existence, less so to remind people of her little known philanthropic work. My favourite was her Imagination Library, which sent one book per month to each enrolled child in her home county, from the day they were born until their first year of school. This she did because her father was unable to read...
When asked in interview what she considered to be her biggest mistake, Dolly Parton replied “haven’t made any.. I’ve never done anything that I didn’t feel I should’ve done exactly that way at exactly that time..”
Given I am incurably full of unnecessary or anticipatory regret, this outlook soothed me. Then I regretted remembering this quote because it may have answered this theme too quickly and I’ve still got 1399 words left..
You see, my crippling imposter syndrome forbids me to be so bold as to be proud of things I don’t regret, let alone things I do. And because the imposter in my syndrome has imposter syndrome, any favourable spotlight on my doings or undoings burns like a laser tattooing crop circles on my soul.
But I’m proud of this.
(For those of you who cannot hear it, my imposter syndrome’s subsidiary just shot its host – I think I it feels.. good? Maybe just one layer less painful..)
I’m proud that this emotional Edward Scissorhands I carry inside me catalyses each blade of self-criticism to sculpt me to try harder, do better or find the similar pain in others to alleviate it. Hopefully this has led me to not be regarded as a total knob. I think.. Just indefinitely annoying. But we’ve all got to be something, right?
So often I’ve felt I was in the audience watching the show of my life like I’m not part of it, but just a spectator. A telescope looking at its own lenses. The talking clock telling its face what its hands already show. A goose ordering foie gras..
For the day I met imposter syndrome, it took both my hands and made them shake, introducing myself to that little voice with a big network.
“It would be so environmentally friendly,” I thought, “if I did not have to walk around with an invisible large paper bag over my head which never biodegrades in the face of praise or appreciation.” Paradoxically, imposter syndrome inadvertently invites a larger spyglass onto the very person seeking to avoid eye contact, an emotional tease scorning an admirer into a lather of curiosity and confusion..
“Can’t you take a compliment?”
[Praise and scrutiny – where is my lifeboat of self-deprecation?]
Where a brain usually sits, festers a bubbling cauldron of fermenting second-guessing and self-reflection. If I take a compliment, firstly it’s automatically undeserved, and secondly I have to give something in return.
“This isn’t snap!” I’m told angrily, “just because I lay a compliment card down, doesn’t mean you have to slap down another card.. take the damn card!”
“Let me give you your flowers..” said Jeoff, for whom I immediately regretted causing irritation.
But you see, I regret everything and nothing.
I regret not having children, but am proud that this doesn’t make me less of a mother.
I regret not standing up for myself on more occasions than not, but am proud that this spurred me to want to stand up for others.
I regret I didn’t have the courage to take his beckoning hand... but am proud that this led me to value myself more.. especially when he then married someone else.. it led to some fair poetry though in my younger self:
You don’t care, you’re just curious It’s making me furious How you tackle and lobby And treat me like a hobby...
Your first love isn’t necessarily your true love..
I regret being so damn regretful and incensing – but am proud I’m not cruel.
I regret making the decision my whole family avoided making – but am proud that.. no wait.. there’s no upside to that one. Perhaps I can only be proud I had the strength to make it..
I regret not going to an Ed Sheeran concert... no wait, scrap that – this has to be what I’m most proud of right now especially...
Maybe I should regret being proud..
For those of you who cannot hear it, my surviving imposter syndrome host has now shot itself.
I don’t regret that at all..
Unrequited Father by Soko Fictions
I never met my father. He left my mother before I was born and all the little details or anecdotes I have gathered about him throughout this life feel like tiny cracks into a dark room I’d never be able to enter, all pieces of information too random to solve the puzzle of a single person’s character. Little do I know about the things that let you really know someone, like which way the lines fall on his face when he smiles or what he’s likely to find funny to begin with. People, mainly my mother, are always telling me how much my mannerisms remind them of him. I never thought that made much sense since they weren’t the sort of genetic similarities you’d inherit but quirks you’d learn from a nurturing father who was around to rub off on you.
My grandmother turned ninety-four last week. We all went round for a gathering to celebrate. As soon as I walked in, as she always does, she asked me if I’d seen him, if I knew where he was. I never answer. The interrogation infuriates my mother, the insensitivity of it. Later, I mentioned I’d spent last month in Paris and the questions started again. “With your father?” He grew up there and everyone always assumed that’s where he ran back to after leaving my mother pregnant with me.
“Of course not,” I said, my tone begging to change the subject. But even my mum looked suspicious.
Everyone seems to forget how inappropriate it is to keep asking me more questions. “Would you like to meet him? Do you want him in your life?” There’s no answer that doesn’t sound incredibly sad or futile.
“I don’t know” was all I could manage, before grabbing a slice of birthday cake and stuffing my face with the cheap buttercream and wax flowers trickling down the side of the sponge in the heat of the room.
It got me thinking about what I would do if I had seen him, if he suddenly stepped out of the fictional character in my mind palace and turned to flesh right before my eyes. I’m not sure I’d believe it. I’m not even sure I’d recognise the old man now, the only photos I’ve ever seen of him are from his twenties. Though my mother always liked to boast about his height, six foot seven, so he’d be easy enough to spot in a crowd, easy enough to wonder is that him? with some fragment of certainty.
Say I caught him in a restaurant. Would I approach a man who has made every effort to pretend I do not exist, to erase me from his life? What do you even say to someone like that?
“Hi Dad” is overly familiar. Maybe “Father” is more sensible, more formal but sounds a tad loaded.
“Remember me?”
No, stupider still. He’s never met me. He’d just be confused and it comes off accusatory, which I don’t mind so much.
A simple “Hello Godfrey, I believe I’m your daughter” would be sufficient to ruin the old man’s meal.
I imagine a long pause. Inaudible tension. The awkwardness of standing there, hoping I am offered a seat, that it’s somehow owed to me, assuming he’s alone, which seems likely. He strikes me as a bit of a lone wolf from everything I’ve been told.
Honestly, I think he’d run. Signal the waiter, try to pay while I stand over him, sheepish, vulnerable and unsure what to do, while he fumbles for his wallet, praying he has enough cash to throw down instead of waiting for the card reader. Brushing past like some minor celebrity avoiding an unwanted fan as fast as he could, undoubtedly not looking back. It would end there. I wouldn’t think to chase him, shock planting my legs into wet cement and should they find the will to move, pride killing any instinct to fight for fear of making a scene.
Could I really handle the embarrassment of it, to finally see my father become the coward I already knew him to be? To experience the final slap of rejection after twenty years of abandonment. A million questions left forever unanswered.
I’d cry about it for months. Years, even. It would cost me a fortune in therapy. No, I couldn’t do it.
Better to spectate from afar. To simply watch what he orders off the menu, notice if it matches what I’d have chosen, how he holds his glass of whatever drink he sips on, how he sits, where he places his napkin, what catches his eye as people pass by, who he calls, what he reads, the colour of his wallet, how much hair he has left, how much he tips.
All it would take was half an hour in a restaurant for me to know him a little better, to catch a glimpse of what I missed out on and not regret making a fool of myself. The kind of innocent memory I would cherish and tell no one about when they ask me again, “Have you seen your dad recently?”