Writing this blog has been a tremendous experience for me. I've found an outlet to process and express complex and evolving feelings and I've been touched beyond expression by the response from friends, colleagues, and strangers who emphathize and sympathize with the comments I post here.
As I've received positive feedback about my writing, I've started to think about other projects. There is a whole genre of topics that I can't write about in this forum, particularly related to relationships, that I could share in other formats: short stories, newspaper articles, maybe a book. Why not spend more time writing, both improving my craft and building something worth sharing more broadly? Last week, I remembered why not.
While I unpacked into my new (and old) home, I sorted through a pile of old, ostensibly important papers. Most were hugely unimportant, but a small pile of scrawled upon computer paper, folded in half and smeared by water stains, caught my attention. I knew what they were before I opened them, and my first, gutteral reaction was to toss them directly into the trash. Some memories shouldn't be recycled. But instead, I opened them.
The papers were notes I had scrawled during some of the worst days in my life. I was trapped in a horrible situation, mostly of my own making, that I could not escape. Everything that happened before, during, and after that period in my life was indescribably awful. Streets in San Francisco caused me to lose my breath, my footing, and my composure for almost two years afterwards and I couldn't fly into San Francisco or Oakland Airports without having flashbacks. I had recurring nightmares about specific events, sensory details, and voices. I wrote to stay sane, to stay alive, to put one foot in front of the other, to alleviate the dull pain that overcame all other sensations. The notes are beautiful.
The notes are beautiful - they capture the haunted, starved, angry, exhausted clawings of my soul. The details are well rendered and capture a bit of compassion and a lot of selfishness. As I read them, or more accurately, as I deciphered what I could given my sloppy handwriting, I was vividly and accurately transported to places and events. I read through them twice. The first time was purely emotional and instinctual. The second time, I had to decide what to do with them. Most of my memories of the really bad period are either blurry, as though viewed from an out of focus telescope, or vivid but small - flashes of someone's face, a voiceover, a physical feeling. I was holding the type of material that I could build something around, with the maturity and safety of a few years' distance.
I threw the notes away. Maybe that means I'm not a writer, that I'm not willing to destroy myself for my craft, to go back there to look for survivors. I like to think I am a writer, that I am brave, but maybe I'm not. Maybe it's too risky for me to let myself take me back. Maybe I'll never be able to go back and I'll never write anything more than these entries. Maybe I'll find new material, or other ways to access the old material. I don't know if I'll be able to create something around those memories, but I know the notes were gone. Maybe that's too bad. Because they were beautiful.
As I've received positive feedback about my writing, I've started to think about other projects. There is a whole genre of topics that I can't write about in this forum, particularly related to relationships, that I could share in other formats: short stories, newspaper articles, maybe a book. Why not spend more time writing, both improving my craft and building something worth sharing more broadly? Last week, I remembered why not.
While I unpacked into my new (and old) home, I sorted through a pile of old, ostensibly important papers. Most were hugely unimportant, but a small pile of scrawled upon computer paper, folded in half and smeared by water stains, caught my attention. I knew what they were before I opened them, and my first, gutteral reaction was to toss them directly into the trash. Some memories shouldn't be recycled. But instead, I opened them.
The papers were notes I had scrawled during some of the worst days in my life. I was trapped in a horrible situation, mostly of my own making, that I could not escape. Everything that happened before, during, and after that period in my life was indescribably awful. Streets in San Francisco caused me to lose my breath, my footing, and my composure for almost two years afterwards and I couldn't fly into San Francisco or Oakland Airports without having flashbacks. I had recurring nightmares about specific events, sensory details, and voices. I wrote to stay sane, to stay alive, to put one foot in front of the other, to alleviate the dull pain that overcame all other sensations. The notes are beautiful.
The notes are beautiful - they capture the haunted, starved, angry, exhausted clawings of my soul. The details are well rendered and capture a bit of compassion and a lot of selfishness. As I read them, or more accurately, as I deciphered what I could given my sloppy handwriting, I was vividly and accurately transported to places and events. I read through them twice. The first time was purely emotional and instinctual. The second time, I had to decide what to do with them. Most of my memories of the really bad period are either blurry, as though viewed from an out of focus telescope, or vivid but small - flashes of someone's face, a voiceover, a physical feeling. I was holding the type of material that I could build something around, with the maturity and safety of a few years' distance.
I threw the notes away. Maybe that means I'm not a writer, that I'm not willing to destroy myself for my craft, to go back there to look for survivors. I like to think I am a writer, that I am brave, but maybe I'm not. Maybe it's too risky for me to let myself take me back. Maybe I'll never be able to go back and I'll never write anything more than these entries. Maybe I'll find new material, or other ways to access the old material. I don't know if I'll be able to create something around those memories, but I know the notes were gone. Maybe that's too bad. Because they were beautiful.
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