My confession—
This is the most difficult blog post I’ve written so far.
It’s about being emotionally naked as a writer. It’s about being vulnerable.
I hate that.
But I swore to myself I wouldn’t post it until I was naked on the page although I gave
myself some leeway: it didn’t matter if the piece had flaws or awkward prose;
it didn’t matter if I stumbled; it only mattered that I let go. This time I
needed to truly examine myself. On the page. For the whole world to see.
This is my humble and terrifying attempt.
* * * * * *
About a month ago, my Litchix crewmate Chris Scofield sent a
link to an essay in The Sun magazine.
I remembered reading Cheryl Strayed’s story “The Love of My life” years ago
when it was first published. I remembered thinking at the time, “How can she love
her mother like a lover? How is that possible?” I remembered feeling a little
sick and sad for her. I remembered being a little repulsed. But I never forgot
that story, and I’ve read everything of hers since, including her novel Torch.
This time, after rereading, I felt sad for me. I’d been
writing for over twenty years and couldn’t get a novel published. Cheryl at
twenty-three sent her first short story to a contest, won first prize, sent a
copy of the story to Alice Munro—yes, that Alice Munro—and Alice wrote back
within two weeks, ending her letter with "I wasn't writing nearly so well at your age."
So I printed out “The Love of My Life” and read it six more
times. I underlined. I highlighted. I sat with it. I carried it with me, as if by
osmosis I could find the secret to writing like her.
I highlighted her first sentence:
“The first time I cheated on my husband, my mother had been dead for exactly one week.”
I highlighted and underlined the paragraph’s last sentence:
“I was raw, fragile, vicious with grief. I would do anything.”
Raw. Fragile. Vicious.
I’d been there.
I would do anything.
Pause.
Had I been there?
No.
I would not do anything. Emotions did not control me. I
controlled emotions. By suppressing them.
And there it was. Years of conditioning. Years of growing up
in New Hampshire where never exposing yourself or your emotions was considered
a strength. If you did, there were consequences.
I remember my brother the day after my dad shot himself. The
police came to the house with the gun. My brother started crying. The
policeman, still holding the gun, said, “Stop crying. You’re the man of the
house now.” And Kent stopped crying. Has he cried since? Probably. Has he fully
grieved my dad? I have no idea. For me it took twenty years and the death of my
two dogs to crack me open. Months of crying, sometimes sobbing until I felt
sick. But the grief finally turned to a manageable level and eventually
disappeared. I did this by myself, sometimes in bed next to my husband.
But those years of conditioning, of being the oldest, the
caregiver, kept my emotions bottled up. Oh, I acted out, fought against the
strict rules and unfairness of my parents’ world, but that’s a normal reaction
to parents who rule by reward and punishment. I wanted to be good girl, but in
this case, it was impossible to live up to the standards without being lobotomized.
It was dangerous to show emotions, too, so I went head on with my folks,
thwarting their rules. My mom would prefer to forget those teenage rebellious
acts and prefers me as a little girl. As mom puts it still, “You were always
such a good girl. When you were upset, you went to your room and closed the
door.”
Closed the door.
Yes, I did.
 |
| Cheryl Strayed |
I turn back to Cheryl’s story. After her mother’s death, she
had sex with some risky, possibly dangerous characters. She destroyed her
marriage with a good man. She shot heroin. That’s how vicious her grief was.
Damn. Was I lacking? Did I not love my father enough? Did I
not show my grief enough? Did I actually have enough grief?
Some would say I was simply trying to replace a father who
didn’t know how to love by finding someone who could, someone who would accept
me without conditions on my behavior. But as they say, love is blind. What they
should say is youth is blind. I wanted to live and love. Cheryl wanted to join
her mother. She wanted to die. At least that’s how I see it.
Thankfully, she didn’t. But the risks she took were outside
anything I could take. Her grief drove her there. My grief drove me in a different direction. Different roads, different drivers.
Perhaps the key to our differences is this—I lost someone
every year of high school. My best friend’s mother. The neighbor boy. A
girlfriend’s brother whom I had a crush on. My best friend, Diane. I knew grief
in many different forms. I’d grown up with death.
My dad’s death the year after I graduated made me want to save people. My ex husband. My sister. Friends. I would not lose one more person.
So what prevents me from writing about this? Where’s the
rawness, the fragility, the viciousness of Cheryl’s grief in my writing? What am
I afraid of? Am I afraid that I’ll hurt someone? Am I afraid of divulging someone’s
secrets or showing them in a negative light? No. Not really. Writing with heart and empathy prevents this. Writing about our lives is not about vendetta
or judgment, and Cheryl and I both write without those.
And then we went on. I’m sure we were back at work or school
within two weeks. I was one month short of nineteen, newly married, and six
months pregnant. My brother was seventeen, my sister thirteen, mom forty-seven.
We went back to the lives we were living before dad died.
Cheryl says that everyone tries to help you through your
grief by telling stories that are similar. I doubt if anyone told her a story
where they went out and fucked every available man or tried heroin, but I bet
there are stories just as intense. What makes Cheryl’s story so different is in
the telling, is in the way she puts you in her shoes and doesn’t apologize and
at the same time seems just as surprised by her actions as the reader does. She
could not imagine a life without her mother. She wanted to die. That’s how she
handled her emotions.
Hers was the cry of a child. I picture a three year old
abandoned on the street in a strange town, and it’s raining. She screams. She
screams out to those walking past and grabs their legs. She won’t let go. And
when one pushes her away, she grabs another and another until somewhere amongst
all those people asks “Where’s your family?” She didn’t have any. No other family
members appear in her stories. She has nowhere to turn, so she decides to hike
the Pacific Coast Trail. A pilgrimage of sorts? Another risky, do or die act? Yes.
Another physical act that walks/hikes/sweats away her grief. She’s written
about it in her new memoir Wild, out
in March. Will she ever put her mother’s ghost to rest? I don’t know. Maybe her
mother’s gift is the gift of story. Maybe that’s what she gave Cheryl by dying
young. Her mother became her muse.
Cheryl reading a funny/hairaising bit from WILD
And me? Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that what I write about
is different from Cheryl. I take risks, I’m not afraid about what my family or
friends think, but I rub up against life in my own way. I, too, had sex with
lots of men after my divorce from, as Cheryl would write it, the Bi-polar
Vietnam Vet George Harrison Look Alike. But I had sex because I was free of my
family and could do it my way. I liked having sex. I felt
empowered by it. As I remember either my dad or husband saying, “You never know
someone until you either work or sleep with them.” I’d say that’s true. Also, I
was looking for love and seeing who was out there. I knew their names, I asked
them questions about their lives, I had short relationships that didn’t work
out. But I remained friends with most of them. I sure as hell wasn’t going to
confuse love with just sex. So I took care of that. I wasn’t trying to find my
dad. I didn’t need another control freak, but I did want a man with a sense of
honor and humor. And I found him eventually.
As did Cheryl. She found a husband and had children and can
boast that she’s one of the finest writers alive. She did good. So did I. I
could leave it there, but it’s not about us. It’s about writers.
 | |
| My essay about my relationship with my dad |
“Trust the process,” everyone tells a writer.
Yes, well, you can say that all
day to a writer, but in the end, you have to trust yourself. And that can be
the hardest part of the whole damn journey.
Yours, as always,
Captain Val
Coming Up!
Who the hell knows? I'm trying to finish a novel, for landlubber's sake!
For more about Cheryl:
Cheryl comes out as Sugar, the advice columnist on The Rumpus
Cheryl is featured in the March issue of Vogue
Click here for Cheryl's website
