My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir

by Jenn Shapland

Carson is forty-one when the transcripts begin, and it’s clear enough that she, a writer renowned for her psychological insight and emotional acuity on the page, is still at a loss as to how to articulate who she is.

that I didn’t know how to talk my way through talk therapy without a story I could comprehend, a narrative logic into which I could insert my actions and my feelings.

What I can tell you about my experience as a fledgling lesbian is that it took me a long time to accept and understand it, the identity, the word itself. Now I think of sexuality and identity, gender too, as processes of trial and error. You have to find what works for you. You need a narrative with room for messiness, one that can accommodate veering toward extremes.

I am more convinced than ever that we are shards of others. Through her relationships with other women, I can trace the evidence of Carson’s becoming, as a woman, as a lesbian, and as a writer. There are so many crushes in a lifetime, so many friendships that mix desiring-to-have with wanting-to-be. It’s the combination of wants that makes these longings confusing, dangerous, and queer.

I read an interview with Myles that offers writing, self-exposure or self-representation, as an antidote to—or an action of—loneliness: “You tell it cause you’re lonely—you’re the only person inside that life.”

Outsiderness is a stance.

“I yearned for one particular thing; to get away from Columbus and to make my mark in the world.”

This ongoing suppression of details is even more troublesome given the burden of proof placed on queer relationships, both historical and present day: if it can’t be proved with direct evidence of sexual intimacy, it never happened. And if you’re looking for evidence, it won’t ever be published.

How I long to preserve my first glimpses of these images, these things. All the while aware that as I preserve them in writing, I am removing older versions, overriding them, inevitably losing information—akin to what digital-era archivists, unknowing poets, call “lossiness.”

The stories of women are paved over by others’ narratives so often that we rarely get to hear about how things went from their perspectives, from the inside. Constant revision is required of queer women trying to navigate and self-actualize in straight spaces.

The illusion: feeling understood by someone does not equate to understanding them. But the illusion is powerful, convincing. It is rare to recognize when you are under its sway.

Though they aren’t easy to follow, the therapy transcripts allow Carson to speak loudly and clearly for herself, and a large portion of them focus on her relationship with Annemarie. The first recorded session begins with the words “I’ve been thinking of Annamarie S.” At first I thought “Annamarie” might be typo on the part of the transcriber, Barbara, or a phonetic reflection of the way Carson said her name, lilting and southern. But throughout Illumination, she writes her name as Anna Marie. How we make beloved others our own.

Carson tells Mary that reciprocity in love does exist, but is extremely unlikely, because of the faith in another person it demands.

Unrequited love, feelings unreturned, was a fear that haunted Carson. In these first few sessions, she describes her own experience with love as a series of triangulated pursuits and doomed missed connections.

And perhaps categorizing her own feelings as unrequited love was a way for Carson to avoid fully recognizing the implications of her longings, or what it would mean to carry them out.

We figure ourselves out via these longings, lustings, envies. Perhaps the fantasy of a crush leaves room for imagination, a space that makes crushes so luscious, so self-sustaining in their way. Without pursuing them, they can be so much more, can be anything we want them to be. They never have a chance to disappoint.

But it occurred to me years later that this was a convenient way to avoid ever actually dating anyone, or thinking seriously about my feelings.

Carson called the other women she loved her “imaginary friends” with Reeves, and clearly their existence caused Reeves to feel insecure even when he and Carson weren’t married or officially together. Yet by calling them imaginary, it seems like Carson is trying to dismiss or downplay her own feelings. Were these friends imaginary because Carson did not pursue them romantically? Or imaginary because Carson only daydreamed about them, without taking action?

An excuse. A buffer. An evasion. A way of protecting herself to assert herself/control the narrative.

“I do believe that there is such a thing as mature love but it takes devotion and discipline on both people’s part. People are so starved for love, so greedy, that at the first sign of emotional attraction and response, their tendency is to clutch and wish to merge and in the end the hope for love escapes them. It takes a great deal of courtesy and ability to see and love the difference, the separateness of the other. To be willing to let the other person be himself, [sic] free, different.”

Historians demand proof from queer love stories that they never require of straight relationships.

When what is real is never fully public, it ceases in effect to be real.

Relying on one person to define what is possible is a product of relationships borne in secrecy. It’s also a reason to hang on to that relationship, no matter how painful it is.

Clothes make visible what we feel or believe about ourselves, even if that identity is invisible to others. What we put on externalizes interior feeling, like a facial expression, but more intentional.

Clothes offer a way to try on different identities, different manifestations of selfhood. They express more than gender, certainly more than binary gender, and more than sexuality, too.

The “I” on the page is a construction, I am making her (“me”) up and choosing which details, which aspects of her I reveal. And some of what comes across is beyond my choosing, gives me away when I’m not even aware of it.

I occupy the category woman, and that category must expand to contain me. In all my outfits.

It makes me think that there will never be a time when women or lesbians are real—when we call them by name, use the right words to recognize them/ourselves. It’s analogous to the concept of coming out, for the oft-cited reason that you never stop coming out as a queer person; every time you meet someone new you must find a way to broach the topic or risk closeting yourself. But also because I don’t feel like I was ever actually in. I feel more like, growing up in a conservative, reticent community, I just didn’t know—for lack of example and lack of vocabulary—what I was, what I could be, that I could love women and still be myself. All I had was Zelda Fitzgerald.

One’s self and one’s world constantly shift and alter, and all we know for sure about either is that they are never the same, but this doesn’t stop us from acting as if they are continuous, stable.

“You stand at the threshold of really coming into your own, and I would say it’s about time.”

No love exists in a vacuum, no matter how much it feels like it does. It is filtered by all the loves we’ve ever read about, witnessed, watched, lived. Its definition is given by use (to nod at Wittgenstein). Love changes in each phase of a relationship, each day, even. As we, too, change constantly. Nor can love be proven. It’s more complicated, harder to see than a ring, a marriage license, a description of any physical encounter.

Is there no way you can defend and spare yourself, learn how to live not so acutely, and still be yourself and an artist?

To think or talk about being sick makes me feel unduly self-pitying, or self-aggrandizing, or self-obsessed.

It can be lonely to be queer, especially if you choose to forego the usual signposts of a complete life, like marriage and children. And it is lonely to be a writer, to put your work first and your income second in a world that would rather you find a full-time job and earn more money. To stay home, to be sick, to write can make all of my life feel like a place out of time.

Love must be public, shared. If you keep it to yourself, it doesn’t really exist; it has no practical use in the world.