When I was young, I used writing in place of speaking on many occasions. Writing was the place where I felt safe to express my opinion, where I felt listened to. My mother can concur that as a child, I sought refuge in poetry. She’d find me in corners of the living room constructing poems without the influence of anyone in particular to do so. As a pre-adolescent and into my teen years, I used writing to ask for permission to do things I felt would not be accepted with my verbal asking. Having it, my well-prepared speech listing off the reasons why I felt I should be free to do what it was I wanted to do in a written form, meant no interruptions. Later in my adulthood, I realized that writing those requests and delivering them as a letter to my mother and father would ensure i was listened to, that I could present all the facts without being cut off by a “no.” I wasn’t the one on the podium, I was more the ghostwriter for a freer and more independent me.
To be fair, they weren’t all convincing. Sometimes my argumentation was along the lines of, “...because everyone else is doing it!” and “...my reputation will be ruined if you don’t let me spend the night at so and so’s house.” At the time, I hadn’t developed a good read of my emotions, but I still trusted that writing would let me express myself without anyone silencing me. I trusted that because, from experience, I knew it to be true. It was the same safety I found in the classroom. My class participation was mostly reserved for jokes and proving that I in fact did not do last night’s reading but the papers I got back always seemed to show some hint of surprise from my teachers, that the internal me could show up in that way when the external me hardly showed any sign of its existence. Sometimes I would also be shaken by what came out of me. Writing was the resurrection song for the thoughts in me that I buried.
Putting something down on paper can make it feel true. If what you’re writing is a thought in your mind, then the pen to paper interaction adds a physical component, something outside of yourself that has the ability to stir a little swirl inside of you—a feeling, a memory, a fear, a realisation.
One of the many intentions behind starting a newsletter was to keep me accountable to my work so that I’m writing daily and reflecting on the experiences of my (our) time here. Instead, it seems, I’ve transformed it into another “must-do” for which I then don’t-do. I often lose sight of the way that mundane moments of the day are still writing material. It's that “social-media sharing” trap, that if you don’t have anything of your “best” to share, don’t share anything at all.
It’s also the old pattern of putting so much pressure onto the things I love that I don’t work on them at all—for fear of failure, yes, but also just not getting it like it should be gotten. It’s pretty boring, to be honest. Gloria Steinem said something like, “writing is the only thing that when I’m doing it, I don’t feel I should be doing anything else.” That always resonated with me, and yet, carving out space, reducing the guilt, dropping the list of things that can always be done around the house—it's so difficult. And re-reading that, I realize that I sound like a housewife from the 70's, trying to do “the” thing but being pulled away by roles. It’s a ping-pong game between feeling like my writing matters and that I have something real to share alongside the classic, “maybe you’re just not meant to be a writer” internal argument.
Life allows so much time to get to the place where we are free— free from pressure, free from expectations, free from shoulds and coulds and certainties. To get free, though, that’s work. I never used that time to get to the root of those blocks—writing blocks, success blocks, self-blocks popping up in all categories. Having the space to do so now feels a lot like those infamous, “laugh now, cry later” masks that represent the idea that life truly is a dance between joy and sorrow. Luckily, joy does feel like something worth working towards and with writing, I receive it.
Some of you might know what I mean— the feeling of a finished text in your hand or a sincere letter that you’ve finished writing and feel like you were really able to express yourself. That's a good feeling, worthy of moving past the discomfort of thinking it’s not good enough and then arriving at a place where you realize you’ve created something out of nothing—and that you actually like it. Maybe some distant version of ourselves won’t, but the present one gets to live out the thrill of the process, the knowledge they started and tried and finished something worthy of their attention.
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