In school I tried writing like a boy in my grade who was smart, and always kept his desk neat and tidy. His letters slanted back to the left as if they were reluctant to be on the page. His fingers looked like he was a nail biter. Maybe he bit his nails fretting over his meticulous handwriting. There was no way his writing was so neat without much thought given to each letter. He bent over his paper and wrapped his left arm around it while he wrote. He had a very pensive look. 

Later on I spent some time trying to write like a girl in my grade who was super smart. Her writing wasn’t anything fancy, just crisp and clean. Somehow she made her cursive look like she’d only connected her print and called it cursive. I doubt anyone would ask her to address their party invitations, but I was drawn to her handwriting. 

My father, who raised me, had a not so neat handwriting. However, I liked it because it was always the same. He taught the older gentlemen Sunday School at our church when I was growing up. He would even pick some of them up and drive them to and from church when they became too old to drive. He took this volunteer position seriously, and purchased his own books to use when teaching. He sat at our dining room table each week preparing for his lesson by making handwritten notes on paper. He wrote them all in cursive, and used a fancy pen which was as skinny at the top as it was at the bottom. I tried for some time to write like him. Having to always think about my penmanship was just too much trouble. 

I was 23 years old and needed my birth certificate to get married. I remember looking at his signature next to “Father” and realized he wrote the exact same back then. So why did I struggle with my handwriting? Why couldn’t I just write a certain way without overthinking the process. Why did I try to write like other people?  Madness. 

At some point I just said “screw it, and wrote the way my hand and pen felt like writing. I didn’t perfect “my” handwriting until I finally gave myself permission to have crummy handwriting. My handwriting looked like each letter was in a personality battle with the other. I never could master connecting them in cursive. If I wrote quickly I would even skip letters. Ones in my own name no less. Every single letter differed from the next. It felt like my trying to be whomever I thought would be accepted at the time. 

Why does this even matter to me? Being not accepted and being left were and still are my biggest fears.  I’ve never been comfortable in my own skin, because that person was given away before I had a chance to prove I was worth keeping. I spent the majority of my life trying to be who I thought was accepted. I subliminally didn’t want to be given away again. I went through life doing all this pretending. We pretended my dark hair came from my adopted father, and my brown eyes from my adopted mother. I was musical because my adopted mother’s side of the family was musical. Various traits and talents were attributed to those whom I share no genetic ties. No!  No!  No!  It was a breeding ground for a constant internal temper tantrum. I wanted to be accepted as the child who was made by other people. Even though we couldn’t embrace their qualities and attributes, I wanted to at least pay homage to the product which was me.  It’s ok that I was made by other people. It’s ok that I wasn’t the product of some love story. It’s ok to speak it and acknowledge my life not wrapped up in a pretty bow. It had to be ok to write like my hands want to write. 

So how do I write?  I finally have consistency in my letters. It no longer looks as fragmented as it did before. The letters connect more fluidly and resemble each other.  It’s a far cry from calligraphy, but resembles my life coming together as I’ve discovered myself. It’s my own handwriting, and it feels good to be the sole proprietor of my own scribble. I no longer write a certain way trying to identify with someone else. I write this way because it’s authentic to me. In my own handwriting, I write the story of my real self.  

Leigh Bailey