Saturday, June 28, 2008
To Tear Down That Wall
I’ve been writing since I was a kid and have always really liked doing it. I think it was a combination of reading anything and everything and feeling quite lonely that made me enjoy it so much.
My mother instilled in us a passion for reading. She was a teacher so she knew just what books to get us started and interested when we were younger and then always got us in to the summer reading program at the library no matter what town we lived in. I absolutely loved reading. It was one of the things my mom did right.
One time, when I was 14, we were heading on our annual summer vacation and it was my first plane ride. We flew from Seattle to Orlando and after awhile, the claustrophobia and the clipped “s” and “t” and basically the entire conversation two ladies were having a few rows behind me started to kill the excitement. I wanted the ladies to shut up before they drove me crazy and I wanted to be free to move around again. I shifted and squirmed and moaned in my seat like a spastic child until my mother, brilliant in her pre-planning, pulled a book from her purse. She handed it to me and that is how I came to read, “Where The Red Fern Grows”. When it came to reading and the exact right material and timing, my mother was a genius.
When we would go on vacations, my mom and dad would go their way and my brothers would go their way, leaving me to explore on my own. It was a very lonely feeling and I would be rather sad until I, inevitably found some boy a year or two younger than me, standing in line for a ride or whatever and we would strike up a conversation. The two of us, my new found friend and I, would then hang around for hours until his parents came to collect him. Then I would be on my own again, sad and lonely until it was time to meet up the family at the designated spot. I would then listen to my parents talk about what they did and my brothers talk about how much fun they had together and it would make me want to jump out of the car and just run as fast and as far as I could to get away from them.
They really hurt me a lot.
So I dove in to writing stories to make myself feel better. As time went on, I got better and better at it until one day I titled a story that riled my mother up in a major way and the joy of writing was dead for a long time. I was walking home from school one day, thinking about a story I was working on. It was a gray, cloudy day, the wind was picking up and rustling the leaves of the trees along the trail I was walking. They weren’t willow trees but I thought, “The wind in the willows” and suddenly decided that would be a great title for my story. Gray, cloudy, rainy, stormy days and night time have always made me feel better, always given me strength, always given me hope for something better. Those days still do it to me to this day as an adult. I’m much calmer when the weather is bad or when it’s dark.
Needless to say, my mother informed me, angrily, that there was already a book with that title and instead of believing me when I stated I had never heard of the book, (I hadn’t...I was all of 8 by that time, maybe), she accused me of plagiarizing. She threw such a fit over an innocent mistake that I did not go back to the typewriter for years to write a story for myself.
I did, of course, have to do writing for school and college and I apparently did exceedingly well but the passion for it wasn’t there like it used to be. It wasn’t until I discovered blogs 4-5 years ago that I felt that fire burn inside me again. I wanted to write. I wanted someone to read it. I wanted someone to hear me.
Along the way, either in school or some book I read, I was taught that you only write what you are most scared of, otherwise, there is no point. I had forgotten that lesson until recently when I was reading someone else’s blog and they wrote that they had been taught the same thing. And the fact is, the posts where I’ve written about things that make me the feel the most vulnerable are the posts that get read and talked about the most. Those types of posts also happen to be the ones I enjoy the most on other blogs. I like to see the raw, human feelings and experiences behind the words. I like to know the good, bad and ugly about a person’s life.
About four years ago I wrote an entry about my early beginnings and forced myself not to delete it. Comment after comment told me how brave I was for writing it all down. To be quite honest, I felt embarrassed with those comments and refused to accept I was brave for it. I wasn’t scared to write that! No way! Hmph. Not me, I’m not scared of shit. That was a cake walk.
Truth is, that was one of the hardest things I’ve ever written and I was so overwhelmed with the comments and the caring behind the words so many wrote that not long after that, I retreated. A few months later I broke my ankle and I was so down...so...lost, really, after working so hard to get ahead, after going through so much to turn my life around, to make something of myself, to finally succeed, I lost so much just to have a chance to gain that to lose it all again was more than I could handle. Add to that some pain medication and I blurted out to the world that I was done. I had given up.
Another outpouring from all kinds of people, people I didn’t know. Total and complete strangers went above and beyond for me! ME! Just to make me feel better. I’ll never forget the military guy who bought every last thing I had on my Amazon wish list I had at the time just because he wanted me to know I was not alone, that someone did care. He wanted me to read to my heart’s content, help pass the time and I was floored when that package arrived. When I found out that one person did this, I have to admit, I just sat there, looking at all the books...the massive amount of books, and cried. Not one single person had ever done anything like that for me in my entire life and here, someone who didn’t even know me did it just to be kind. I will never forget that person. Ever. And I will never forget what he did and I have done my best to pay it forward, beyond, hopefully, what he did for me. I want someone else in this world to feel like I felt that day.
After that, though, I started to feel really vulnerable, really exposed, too known. The irony is, when I was younger, I would have lapped that up. As I get older, I feel like closing myself off more and more. I have it in my head that the less people know about me, the better off I’ll be.
Except that isn’t true.
And now I sit here and think about those words I was taught so long ago and just heard again on another blog I read and wonder if I can write about that I most fear. Because that’s the only thing worth writing about, they said.
I don’t know if I can. I don’t think I am that brave. I don’t think I am that strong. I think for all the boisterous bullshit I put out here about what people should and should not be doing, I can’t take my own damn advice. I think I’m all talk and a whole lot of hiding. Oh I can sure help other people out. I give great assvice. But me? Me do something like that? Pscht. I think not.
Except, I think maybe I should try that again.
Jesus, just writing that makes tingles of fear run up my arms. Seriously, I physically feel that right now. Hell, I feel like I’ve exposed more about myself than I should just in this post. I guess that’s a first step.
Second step, allow this to stay.
Third step, try not to throw up.
Fourth step, do it again.
I do have a lot of stories...I just have to find the spine to write them. Because otherwise, it’s not even worth it.
