Not too long ago when my parents drove out from New York, they brought my high school yearbooks. In almost all of the signatures, the ones saying how we’d keep in touch, the ones saying call me over the summer, more exclamations then you could shake a stick at, something very strange became apparent.
They all said to remember them when my book got published. At seventeen, from all indications, I knew what I wanted. I got out of writing a report on Light and August, by promising the teacher I’d write her a play. She headed up the school magazine, and needed it. I had no interest in the report, and voila, a partnership was born.
My play was awful. Awful. Then they edited, and it became not only awful, but additionally it made no sense. That didn’t stop my confidence that I would in fact be an author.
In seventh grade, a kid prone to depression, I wrote all the time. Journals, poetry, any form I could use to express myself. Then one day, my mother found my diary where I had written about her, and there was hell to pay. She wouldn’t admit to it but openly commented on things I had written, anger with which I had nowhere to go because my father would have stomped it down in a heartbeat. She humiliated me. I brought everything I had written up until then, and quietly tore up the pages during loud parts of classes at school, disposing of them in different garbage cans for fear anyone would read anything.
Now, should anyone think time heals and I look back and laugh, I don’t. I’m not built that way. I kept ruminating how she could hate me so, and not wonder why I wouldn’t hate her back. I was in seventh grade. Who doesn’t feel that way at times?
That is now many years, relationships, lives later. It has taken me this long to write something without fear that it will be read. But it has left a horrible scar, not to the rest of the world, trust me, people have far greater concerns. The scar is that part that I can’t shut off. I’ll start to write a scene, and if it gets too messy, too ugly, I start to think about my parents, and how this would embarrass them, and on and on. I think about how I should write about something neat, clean, something sweet and nice and something that would be nice for them to show off.
And I can’t tell you how much that pisses me off. Almost thirty years have passed since something was read that I didn’t think would ever be read. I fight that feeling often, that feeling of hurting someone. I talk a good game, but I do care what people think. I hope, that when I’m done, the story is just so compelling that the ugly isn’t held against me. Then again, what would we be trying to desperately work out on paper if our lives were so, so neat?
In the end, I wonder if I’m a better writer for it. I wonder if because I’ve been writing for so long in my head, and reading because it was far safer, far easier to keep your distance, if because of all that, maybe, just maybe, now is the time.
I do know that when I read the yearbook comments, a little bit of my heart broke. What happened to that girl who thought she could do it? Maybe though, I just wasn’t ready to do it before.
I’m ready now.
This is so heartbreaking. I don’t understand how parents can be so cruel. Just thinking about you tearing up your precious words and scattering them in various garbage cans makes me want to cry.
Have you written about this particular moment? I can imagine how difficult it is but I also sense it would be cathartic for you. Just for you. I wrote about the father who abandoned me when I was 3 and it was better than any therapy session I could have attended.
Remember, you can still be that girl in your yearbook. Life is not over. Not by a long shot.
MSB,
This is the closest I’ve come to writing about it, as close as I can get about many things in that arena.
One thing to note: There are certain strengths that I carry due to the life I have lived,not just from that small moment, but many larger ones as well. I have a handful of close friends, and our closeness is due to living through things together. I have always been blessed in friendship, people who cheer for you. pick you up, and know what a confidence is in the truest sense.
If I didn’t live the entire life I have lived, I wouldn’t be me and it is the me who fell in love with my husband and stepdaughter, my two sons, my beautiful life.
I’d like to add, after reading so much about your mom, about you, she would be so proud. Your compassion touches me aagain and again, and it is people like you that light the way on my sometimes confusing road of motherhood. Thank you, MSB.
“I’m ready now.”
Good. Go for it,Lyra.
And as one of my writing profs said, you have to write what you want to write and damn the consequences. If you piss someone off, you piss them off. (easily said – my mother reads my blog)
Egads!
I can’t imagine. If one day half of my posts disappear, you’ll know what happened.
I’m reading Betsy Lerner’s Forest for the Trees right now, and she says fear of your family’s reaction to what you write is one of the biggest issues writers have to overcome.
By far the biggest in the self-editing arena.
Which in turn leads to the kind of tepid, tame, and sanitized dross that nobody ever remembers.
“Tepid, tame and sanitized dross.”
That is it. Exactly.
Ah, Lyra. I feel your pain. Something similar happened to me around the same time. I used to keep a journal on loose pages. One day I stuffed some into an album cover and let a friend borrow it before I remembered. She found my pages and showed her mother. They were filled with my longing to die. Her mother told my mother and my mother swept it under the rug – like everything else. She never said a word but I felt so outed. I had been told from a young age not to air dirty laundry in public and I had never told anyone what was going on in our house. I destroyed all my writing too. From that point on I would write when no one was home and go outside and burn the pages. I too, have a hard time sharing. I don’t have any advice, but I do understand. Hugs.
And I know just how hard it was for you to type that. Well done, my friend.
“What’s said in this house, stays in this house.” Yes. Still gets to me. The upside is that I am myself very open, for good or bad, my kids will never have to cover/hide/lie for me. I let the crazy out for all to see. I also apologize. Alot.
That made me chuckle. I’m the same way! Determined my kids will not live through the same. Besides, apologizing is a great learning tool. It’s inevitable we all screw up every now and then. Acknowledging we’re only human, owning up to what we did, apologizing and asking forgiveness are important life skills.
Such sad and painful memories probably never disappear. But I think you’re older, stronger and ready to deal with them now. You have lots of folks rallying around you, and we’re all ready to read your book. You can do it.
Thanks, Sherry.