The Story of All This Pt. 2
During this period in my life, I was very uncomfortable, insecure, and struggling with my image. I had terrible acne and the medicine I was taking for it was so strong that it could only be purchased in conjunction with birth control pills because it caused birth defects. I was excruciatingly embarrassed by my face. I didn’t want to be looked at, I didn’t want to be noticed. So the idea of having a strong voice was confronting and, in the beginning, I could only explore it through other people, using them to reflect what I felt. I began photographing women my age and talking with them about their lives. Gradually, I noticed that my journals were becoming a journey, not a simple destination. They were real life, happening in the moment. I’d complete a journal every two months. They were thick and full and ripe with feelings and thoughts and drawings and photographs. People would read them and say, “Oh, I totally feel this way” or “I relate to that so much.”
It led me to do a project called A Descent into Limbo. At a lecture, I had heard Maurice Sendak, the children’s book author and illustrator, speak about creativity as a “descent into limbo.” It described perfectly how I felt as I turned nineteen. People would say to me, “Nineteen is so easy,” or “You’re so lucky to be nineteen,” or “That was the time of my life.” But I didn’t feel that way. And neither did the people around me: My best friend was anorexic, another friend had been raped, another had just had an abortion. The people I loved, whom I was inspired by, had overcome incredible things by the age of nineteen. Realizing the potency of the photographs I’d been taking of women my age, I put together a school show of large photographic panels with essays written by the women themselves about what was honestly happening in their lives and what they believed. I was fascinated with peoples’ truths, how they were perceived by others and how that didn’t necessarily jibe with what they felt. People would say to me, “You seem so together” when I felt so apart. And I knew I wasn’t alone. We have all edges and the challenge is to not hide them. I made a pact with myself to be as honest as I could and admit as much as I could and to share it all.
And then, just as I was finally clicking in, making friends, becoming part of the college community, I got mononucleosis. My newly-spun world dropped out from under me and I suddenly found myself back home sitting in the kitchen in my mom’s pajamas, disheveled and pale. I had to quit school. I thought I’d never get my life back. Feeling funky in La Canada, I read my favorite author, SARK, whose books – like Inspiration Sandwich: Stories to Inspire Our Creative Freedom – are wildly and wonderfully illustrated and written to encourage living life to the fullest. Her company, Camp SARK in San Francisco, has an inspiration telephone line that you can call and leave or hear an uplifting message. For some irrational reason, I decided to call and leave a message. “Hi, this is Sabrina, I just need to call and tell someone that I feel really disheveled. I know you want something inspiring on your machine, but I basically don’t have anything happening and I just feel rumpled.”
A week later, the phone rang. “Sabrina, this is SARK.” Ohmygod. I could barely speak. I’d been reading her since I was 15. My dad was in the background saying, “Write down everything she says, you’ll never talk to her again, this is a moment in your life.”
“Thank you for talking about being disheveled,” SARK said. “Thank you for speaking about your real feelings.” We launched into a long conversation. She talked about her own insecurities, and it was a wonderfully ageless, timeless connection. Here was a woman I had admired for years calling me not because I was an artist – she didn’t even know I was an artist – not because of my journals, which she also didn’t know a thing about, but because I had told the truth.
Two months after leaving Berkeley with mono, I finally returned. Instead of going back to art school, I went to work at a clothing store so I could pay off my bills, which I had run up toward $900 before getting sick. When I wasn’t working, I was home watching Oprah and trying to heal and regain strength. And then, SARK called again. “I feel that I’m supposed to know you. I don’t know why. But I feel it. And I was wondering if you’d come and hang out or intern at Camp SARK – you can lie down on the floor whenever you need to.” How could I pass up this great opportunity?
“I have a job at a clothing store and I really need to buckle down and work,” I said. “I’ve got all these bills to pay.”
“Sabrina, I spent my whole life listening to my dad tell me to buckle down. I worked 250 jobs before I finally realized that life is about unbuckling.”
On November 4, 1996, SARK and I met at her house in San Francisco. As usual, I carried a journal with me. She took one look at it and asked to read it. “There’s a book in this,” she said after one page.
“Excuse me.”
“There’s a book in this.” I almost hated her for saying that.
“You can say that because you’re SARK, but I’m only 19.” I didn’t even want to think about being published. It was too much. Over the weeks that followed, SARK read all my journals. Periodically, she would call and say, “Sabrina, would you please write a book.”
“I can’t; I don’t know how; I don’t know.” I was still working at the store to pay off my $900 of debt. It was pretty bleak, but it was necessary. “Okay, then what is it that you would really love to do?” I told her I’d think about that and hung up.