Memories and Memoirs Coordinated Studies
Short Personal Narrative Student Sample #3

JC Clapp & Melissa Grinley, North Seattle Community College
Winter 2010

STUDENT SAMPLE:
This should give you and idea of what we’re looking for. Please do not use ideas, form, or other content that you read here. Come up with your own ideas. This is for sample purposes, only! (Yes, this was written by an actual student from one of our previous classes, and yes, we obtained this student’s permission to use his/her paper as a sample.)

Gifted

She danced amongst the elements of my inner world, within the depths of my roots.
Intrinsically one, we were held together by a selfless form of fate.

***

Another careless teenage pregnancy! This is what I envisioned that horrid creature grumbling to herself before she entered the stark white waiting room, the room where I lay scared, rattled, unsure and unprotected. Massive bloat had ensued from rampant toxicity and stretch marks had riddled the fairness of my stomach, breasts, arms and legs. Purple spots from "pregnancy mask" had raped whatever signs of physical dignity I had left. Alas, I had become a spotted whale… You know, the kind that medical poachers find any excuse to rip into.

I had become accustomed to defiling myself through casual sex with just about anything at the tender age of thirteen. At thirteen, I was sexually uneducated yet physically ripe, and believed giving a blowjob would cause pregnancy if you swallowed. I didn’t care. I had always been a lonely and tactile creature, merely desiring human touch.

"Time to get this baby out of you," she sneered, as if I didn’t deserve to be treated with that vague concept called "humanity" or to have been blessed with the glorious gift of fertility.

"Where is Dr. Timmons?" I inquired meekly, horrified by this ogre of a woman before be, bearing swollen, calloused hands the size toaster ovens.

"He is off duty. I'm Dr. Snodgrass. Put your feet in the stirrups," she frigidly replied. Before I could respond, she had hastily grabbed my feet and did it for me, as if I were a lifeless doll who, like herself, had no ability to feel.

At age 17, I had become legally emancipated from my mother, who had left me for a fundamentalist authoritarian who had been in search of a mother for his three sons. After he had injected her with his demented interpretations of Christianity, they were married. Since I actually had prolific thoughts of my own, he didn’t see use for me in their world. I was then cast out into the iniquitous world of sinners, a world where the great archfiend Beelzebub used scarlet women like myself as breeding fodder for immorality.

"You're not progressing. I'm going to break your water."

The faceless doctor parted my ballooned legs and shoved her behemoth gloved hand inside my nervous womb, blindly moving it around as if she were trying to pull a rogue rabbit out of it's hidey hole by it's ears so she could punish it. The physical pain paled in comparison to the humiliation. I said nothing, but retreated within. With her other hand she pulled out what looked like a crochet hook for evil giants, like herself. Inserting it, she perforated my daughter's encasement, the membrane my body had created and encapsulated her with for protection, and now I could protect her no longer. I sensed my intense love for her and then sensed her love in return. Her love saturated me with a warm wetness, and spread to the exterior parts of my body, like a soft orgasm, extending through to my limbs. I smiled and then wept.

Pregnancy was a humble time of reflection, and enabled me to discover within myself, with the help of my little being within, how to love myself and look toward the future instead of counting down to the unknown date in which I would eventually just give up and do myself in. It was within that reflection, bathing in a swath of hormones and motherhood that I determined the highest trait one could possess: Selflessness.

After what felt like an hour, the doctor returned. Her barren demeanor silently shouted anger, intolerance and impatience, longing to get this unfit mother out of her ward. After performing yet another invasive vaginal examination, she flatly stated, "The baby still has not dropped. In fact, It has moved upward. I'm going to have to perform a cesarean section".

My daughter and I endured a magical relationship during the time of gestation, moving upward toward the highest source of oneness, pure existence. We hung on to each other symbiotically, relying on the other for the simplest, yet complex of all functions: Life. My body hanging on to her for weeks past due confirmed the fact that I was not ready to say goodbye. Her moving upward within me was our last inner embrace.

I don’t remember much after the alarming realization of a surgical extraction. I have vague flashes of epidural gone wrong due to blatant ineptitude, the inability to breathe, catatonic nausea and then asphyxiation on my own vomit.

Blackness.

So of course, being unconscious, I don’t actually recall the procedure, but have ill fantasies of what had succeeded. Cut…rip…cut…pull…slosh…. plop. Then, I envision the most beautiful mourning song of all, the shrill song of a siren protesting her capture, her first breaths in a new world of cold, emotionless sterility: Catharsis… Our catharsis.

The surgical wounds inflicted rendered me hospitalized, which I had come to be thankful for. The 48 hour final decision marker allowed me to spend every waking moment with her, holding her, changing her, feeding her, talking to her, loving her… In essence, mothering her. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever witnessed, absolute perfection, and a true example of what health should be. Her being was stately, elegant, non-fragile and unadulterated, everything I had wanted for myself, but was never allowed. Her expressions radiated authenticity, something that we had created together. Her scent was that of myself, yet purer, with the aftertaste of a wish from the heavens, pure angelic snow.

Alone. This was something I would have to get used to. Uniquely and undoubtedly loved. This was something that she would learn to experience and wear like a virtue.

The day that I handed her over was my own day for rebirth. I relived our catharsis through a majestic flooding of tears and blessed her with a solid promise. I promise to ALWAYS be here.

My daughter, Piper Alice, is now 13 years old and walks in the image of myself. Through an open adoption I am able to admire her strengths, which are: fierce intelligence, a magnificent will, wry humor, and the essence of loveliness, which, in my mind stems from the best start possible, being raised with honesty, love, tolerance, patience and understanding. At age 31, I am still trying to perfect these qualities in myself, but have found my strength through overcoming a past of obstacles, learning to free myself from criticism and ultimately creating positive traits through doing for others and the giving of myself.

The day she was born, so was I.