This is how it felt inside
I can pinpoint the moment. I was sitting in the dining room in our apartment in Erie, Pennsylvania. I sat there often. Usually cross-legged with a hot cup of coffee or tea cooling on our stained-beyond-recovery wooden table. When I'd sit there swimming in my thoughts, I'd come up for air to listen for the leaves shedding from the towering oak tree just outside. Watch the snow blanket the naked branches. Watch it melt away.
On this particular winter day, I had just poured my memories and hurt onto a blank page. After a few paragraphs, I stopped and stared back at it. Reading the words I wrote was like hearing myself say out loud the things I'd tried to bridle during a fight. I couldn't take it back. It was reckless. Honest. Cathartic, jarring and painful. It was too much. It was too telling. I closed the document. Boarded up the well, and walked away. I crawled into in bed for hours and watched Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Peaky Blinders, Parks and Recreation (for the third time...), The Office a couple more times.... and probably a number of other tv shows that I can't remember. For weeks, months, years... I self-medicated by distracting myself, tuning out and spending hours (and hours and hours) of watching brain-melting television. Until I couldn't even hear my own thoughts. Until even the words I tried to say would come out wonky and garbled.
I've been reading the Sunday Secrets posted on PostSecret every. single. Sunday since I was... I don't know... 15? I wake up on Sundays, and before anything else, I'll read through each of the secrets people have posted from around the world. Today, one secret in particular stopped me in my tracks. It was a photo of books thrown and scattered like debris in a concrete classroom. As if a hurricane had stepped into a library. It wrote, "This is how it felt inside when I remembered..."
Me too.
This is how I felt on the floor of the bathroom when I remembered at 19 years old. Lungs pulsating for breath. Skin threatening to shake off my bones. This is how I felt at the dining table of our quiet apartment in winter again at 24.
So, this is me reopening the door to this room I've left destroyed and disheveled. This is me putting the books back on the shelf one by one. This is me coming face to face again with my trauma that punches the wind out of my chest and kicks me while I'm down. This is healing.
On this particular winter day, I had just poured my memories and hurt onto a blank page. After a few paragraphs, I stopped and stared back at it. Reading the words I wrote was like hearing myself say out loud the things I'd tried to bridle during a fight. I couldn't take it back. It was reckless. Honest. Cathartic, jarring and painful. It was too much. It was too telling. I closed the document. Boarded up the well, and walked away. I crawled into in bed for hours and watched Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Peaky Blinders, Parks and Recreation (for the third time...), The Office a couple more times.... and probably a number of other tv shows that I can't remember. For weeks, months, years... I self-medicated by distracting myself, tuning out and spending hours (and hours and hours) of watching brain-melting television. Until I couldn't even hear my own thoughts. Until even the words I tried to say would come out wonky and garbled.
I had always inched myself to this point. Closer and closer. To be vulnerable, to lean in, to share my heart with others. I wanted to be a resource to others who might have experienced similar things because when I was growing up, I didn't have that. There wasn't a MeToo movement. Stronger men with lustful hands were still untouchable. Writing was a way for me to connect with other women. It was my way of processing, of rebuilding. I had been so destructive in my life, burned so many bridges. Writing went hand in hand with my redemption. But this, this shitty first draft broke something in me. It drilled into an exposed nerve that sent me reeling.
So, to answer the question, "Are you still writing?" The quick answer is no. Not personally. Not yet... maybe not ever again. But if I'm being honest, I haven't really tried. This is my first try in a while, and it feels like I'm learning how to walk again.
So, to answer the question, "Are you still writing?" The quick answer is no. Not personally. Not yet... maybe not ever again. But if I'm being honest, I haven't really tried. This is my first try in a while, and it feels like I'm learning how to walk again.
I've been reading the Sunday Secrets posted on PostSecret every. single. Sunday since I was... I don't know... 15? I wake up on Sundays, and before anything else, I'll read through each of the secrets people have posted from around the world. Today, one secret in particular stopped me in my tracks. It was a photo of books thrown and scattered like debris in a concrete classroom. As if a hurricane had stepped into a library. It wrote, "This is how it felt inside when I remembered..."
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| Photo from PostSecret.com -- partially blurred |
Me too.
This is how I felt on the floor of the bathroom when I remembered at 19 years old. Lungs pulsating for breath. Skin threatening to shake off my bones. This is how I felt at the dining table of our quiet apartment in winter again at 24.
So, this is me reopening the door to this room I've left destroyed and disheveled. This is me putting the books back on the shelf one by one. This is me coming face to face again with my trauma that punches the wind out of my chest and kicks me while I'm down. This is healing.
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