When I was seven years old, I wrote my first books. They were erotica. My mother had responded to my innocent inquiry about sex (which by now I’ve forgotten entirely) by giving me The Joy of Sex to peruse at my leisure. I was overwhelmed, to say the least! The veil was lifted from my eyes, but my mind couldn’t take it in. I drew furiously to try to understand this new thing I’d learned, creating storybooks to tell the story I was trying to comprehend.
My next memorable writing experience was in the fifth grade, when I was barely 10 years old. I’d just discovered that my mother was prostituting. The pieces came together: the $20 bill on the coffee table, her newest “boyfriend” with her in the bedroom. And, again, it was overwhelming. I stood looking at the money, my mind quiet from the shock and yet full, searching for an outlet. I harbor no doubt that had there been alcohol or drugs on the table next to the money, I would have taken them. Instead, when my eyes scanned the room for something, they found a pencil. I went to the pencil, following the impulse to write. I knew enough by now to keep what I wrote secret. I didn’t want my mother to know what I was thinking. I saw no paper, but instead I saw the mural of a rainforest on our wall. I went up to it and wrote in teeny-tiny letters, “My mother is a whore.” Ahhhh. Relief. The words were out…out there. And somehow it made my experience real.
I started journaling in seventh grade, and I still have all of my journals going back to eighth grade. I didn’t recognize that I had any gift with writing until a couple of my college professors noticed what I was writing about and how I was doing it (I’d moved beyond erotica at this point in my career…). I was a bit surprised, really…writing came so easily and was such a relief to my inner pressure that it never occurred to me that it might be something of value in the world. Plus, what I wanted to write about was so revealing…I wasn’t sure how much I wanted others to see it. I continued to write in private for myself, get a bachelor’s in English and publish a few pieces in trade journals for the massage therapy industry, technical manuals in the technology company I work for, and a few pieces related to workshops I developed. None of it was the personally revealing stuff I was writing in private. I was not ready yet to be seen.
I have only this year, at 38, begun to awaken to the reality of the double life I have led. As a child, it was simply not safe to reveal how I felt. In response to two-year-old shenanigans, I was beaten by my stepfather and my schizophrenic mother. In response to my pre-adolescent reflections on life, I was beaten and screamed at for hours by my mother. At 13, I went into foster care, and I lived there through high school. I became a born again Christian at that age and learned that all my anger and grief and confusion could be (should be) wiped away by the blood of the Lamb. And so I hid them. I hid it all. I hid my sarcastic humor, my cynicism, my hurt, my depression, my anger, my sexuality…well, I just hid me.
And yet it came pouring out in my writing. My writing is the one place I simply could not hide. I wrote all the painful stuff, filling literally tens of thousands of journal pages with the thoughts and feelings that had to be expressed. I went to therapy and shared some of it. I went to support groups. I got married to and then divorced from a man who hoped that one day I might be willing to let him read my journals. Horror! I would never do that! I wrote in private, awaiting the time when I would be beyond all this inner turmoil, so I could get on with some real writing, something creative and profound, something that would contribute to the world at large.
