I have always let my thoughts and emotions spill out on paper where I can express myself in a way I can’t do verbally. Perhaps because some things are too difficult to verbalize. Some things you can’t bear to say out loud because once they’re given voice they become living extensions of ourselves.
So, at a young age, I began to write. I wrote in notebooks and on notebooks. On scraps of paper and abandoned napkins. Mom saw and she bought me a journal for my birthday one year. I remember flipping through those blank pages envisioning my words written on them, thinking that now, finally, I could say some things!
Other than a handful of poems, most of my writings were destroyed by a fire of my own making. I wish I had those now; wish I could revisit and reacquaint myself with that young girl/woman. Reconnect with her in that way. Why did I do it? Fear. Fear of exposing myself.
I was all there in those notebooks; anger, fear, doubt, pain, but also joy and laughter and hopes and dreams. I didn’t want people to see that. Didn’t want them to see me! Accidentally leaving one sensitive missive out in the open and the resulting panic from thinking that someone would pick it up was the catalyst for the burning of 1984.
Today my mother left us. That’s what brings me here to the blankness of pages that I will fill with the thoughts crowding my mind. Mom would approve. She always wanted to write a book but as it turned out she was more a talker than a writer.
I guess in hindsight I should have tried harder to help her get her words on paper because I now recognize, hours after her passing, the importance of having your voice heard in this world. How telling our stories somehow makes us real. Makes the journey through this existence mean something in a way nothing else can.
Our stories tell who we are and who we once were. Our stories chronicle our triumphs and our sorrows. They tell of our pleasure, pain, laughter, and tears. They can shine a light or cast a shadow on those in our lives. I say all this because now, following her death, her stories are what remain. They are what I’m thinking of as I stare at photos that resemble the mother that I hold in my heart and in my mind’s eye. She’s there, in her truest essence, in the stories she shared with me.
This realization also comes at the end of a very trying time in my personal life. My marriage over, my family torn apart, my mother sick and rapidly becoming someone I loved but whom I no longer recognized. The demands of trying to pull my life back together while taking care of Mom, holding down a full-time job, and trying to take care of my own children, proved to be too much for me.
I felt like I was coming apart. I could not hold it together. My mind didn’t feel like my own and my body had gone full-on rogue; refusing to sleep, not wanting to eat. This after the stress eating phase during which I packed on sixty-five pounds.
Then, brutal anxiety attacks and trips to the emergency room for help regaining some semblance of control. I was broken open. Fully exposed, had anyone bothered to look, and at the same time buried alive. I was shutting down and I was afraid for myself in a way I had never been before.
I asked for help. I tried to explain. But, I had completely sold everyone I knew on the image I had projected for years and now they didn’t buy it, couldn’t believe the truth of the matter. I was the strong one. The “get it done” one. Even now, most still can’t see or they refuse to believe, whichever best fits their needs. The truth is that I was, as my daughter’s favorite quote goes, a “pitiful fool at the end of his pitiful rope.”
Help came from a stranger in answer to a prayer I neither had the strength to compose nor the faith to speak. He came, peered into the very heart of me, and began to rebuild me one kind word at a time. Some tough love, too, as it was needed. Never underestimate the kindness of strangers.
What you are reading, this entire website, is my attempt to remain open and exposed. To show the real and authentic me to the best of my ability. So that you may know me, yes, but also to show that it’s okay to be known. It’s why we are here; it’s why we came.
So, at a young age, I began to write. I wrote in notebooks and on notebooks. On scraps of paper and abandoned napkins. Mom saw and she bought me a journal for my birthday one year. I remember flipping through those blank pages envisioning my words written on them, thinking that now, finally, I could say some things!
Other than a handful of poems, most of my writings were destroyed by a fire of my own making. I wish I had those now; wish I could revisit and reacquaint myself with that young girl/woman. Reconnect with her in that way. Why did I do it? Fear. Fear of exposing myself.
I was all there in those notebooks; anger, fear, doubt, pain, but also joy and laughter and hopes and dreams. I didn’t want people to see that. Didn’t want them to see me! Accidentally leaving one sensitive missive out in the open and the resulting panic from thinking that someone would pick it up was the catalyst for the burning of 1984.
Today my mother left us. That’s what brings me here to the blankness of pages that I will fill with the thoughts crowding my mind. Mom would approve. She always wanted to write a book but as it turned out she was more a talker than a writer.
I guess in hindsight I should have tried harder to help her get her words on paper because I now recognize, hours after her passing, the importance of having your voice heard in this world. How telling our stories somehow makes us real. Makes the journey through this existence mean something in a way nothing else can.
Our stories tell who we are and who we once were. Our stories chronicle our triumphs and our sorrows. They tell of our pleasure, pain, laughter, and tears. They can shine a light or cast a shadow on those in our lives. I say all this because now, following her death, her stories are what remain. They are what I’m thinking of as I stare at photos that resemble the mother that I hold in my heart and in my mind’s eye. She’s there, in her truest essence, in the stories she shared with me.
This realization also comes at the end of a very trying time in my personal life. My marriage over, my family torn apart, my mother sick and rapidly becoming someone I loved but whom I no longer recognized. The demands of trying to pull my life back together while taking care of Mom, holding down a full-time job, and trying to take care of my own children, proved to be too much for me.
I felt like I was coming apart. I could not hold it together. My mind didn’t feel like my own and my body had gone full-on rogue; refusing to sleep, not wanting to eat. This after the stress eating phase during which I packed on sixty-five pounds.
Then, brutal anxiety attacks and trips to the emergency room for help regaining some semblance of control. I was broken open. Fully exposed, had anyone bothered to look, and at the same time buried alive. I was shutting down and I was afraid for myself in a way I had never been before.
I asked for help. I tried to explain. But, I had completely sold everyone I knew on the image I had projected for years and now they didn’t buy it, couldn’t believe the truth of the matter. I was the strong one. The “get it done” one. Even now, most still can’t see or they refuse to believe, whichever best fits their needs. The truth is that I was, as my daughter’s favorite quote goes, a “pitiful fool at the end of his pitiful rope.”
Help came from a stranger in answer to a prayer I neither had the strength to compose nor the faith to speak. He came, peered into the very heart of me, and began to rebuild me one kind word at a time. Some tough love, too, as it was needed. Never underestimate the kindness of strangers.
What you are reading, this entire website, is my attempt to remain open and exposed. To show the real and authentic me to the best of my ability. So that you may know me, yes, but also to show that it’s okay to be known. It’s why we are here; it’s why we came.
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