Write to Read Yourself

My favorite Aunt is constantly encouraging me to be more spontaneous. "Go out after dark, will you? You have a young husband! What?! You take your bra off as soon as you get in the house?! Where are you headed-- a muu muu? What will you be like when you're 80?" I love her and she's one of the wisest women I know, so I try to heed her word.

But I didn't really get it.

Then I translated to my vernacular: she's identifying that I'm a control freak. Right! Totally. Yup.

And she's urging me to relinquish.

Seems like everyone is. I've written here about working with writer, Shira Ehrlichman, on a one-on-one 6 week series. We're coming to the conclusion (sob!) & Shira is urging me to reflect on my growth. The biggest piece is this dawning self-awareness that I am even a control freak in my writing. I sit down to Say Something. I'm so accustomed to writing a yoga class plan to communicate an aspect of the practice to students. Or writing a statement about mass incarceration to convince the reader that it's an unjust practice. I am thinking of my thesis statement and offering evidence in support.

It's fine. But if it's the only way I know how to write, I'll be a bit lopsided. It's like I only ever lift heavy objects with my right arm. The left side of my body is just hanging there.

Some interesting pieces have emerged when I stepped inside an era of my life and simply described it. I didn't walk into these memories with an agenda of what I had to Say. I poked around a bit, looked at the flaking paint on concrete blocks, and wrote about it. I thought these pieces were throw-aways. Shira held them tenderly.

I thought that I control what my writing conveys. I have an idea in my head and I cleverly arrange language to deliver it. Boom. Done. Slowly, I'm seeing that my writing might translate something internal and unformed to ME. The thought is kind of freaking me out. I'm a control freak, remember?

Shira and I read the piece I'd written about middle school. She examined some of the verbs, like "haunt." "It sounds kind of dangerous," she said.

It was.

I never consciously thought that, but I was in peril during those years. I was vulnerable, as any child is, and I was in an unhealthy environment. I hadn't thought of the myriad of threats. For example, I remembered that in 7th grade a teacher was suspended for sexually harassing a student. 7th grade. We were what, 12? That same year I recall the gym teacher, who must have been 23 at the time, telling me to run "towards the mall." I have never been a shopper. It was simply sexism. He didn't get me and he didn't care to see his students. The scenes ranged from mild to severe, but there were lurking threats that I didn't quite know how to process at the time & haven't seriously considered since. When I walked into that time without an agenda, I was able to access intuitively.

And there it is again: intuition. That realm of information that might not always readily translate itself. It may operate in feeling or sense but outside of language. Loosening the reigns on my "purpose" in writing has ceded towards intuition. I read other people's writing to understand their experience. How odd. I'm reading my own writing, offered in this way, & realizing insight into my own.