Write More of THAT

This week I took the 'Harmless' Harmon Killebrew piece to our interim writing group - the one that has sprung up between semesters.  In some ways I like this impromptu group better.  The people who attend are among my favorite writers (yes I have favorites) and I get to hear new voices as well.  It's more relaxed and has more writing sharing than a usual class.  How nice would it be to have a couple classes during the semester that were all small group like this?  That would be an incredible luxury.

Anyway - they loved this piece.  And as we were discussing it, many of them who are familiar with the rest of my memoir-ic (that is TO a word :-P) writing commented on how different that piece felt to those others.  Then came the inevitable request for more pieces around the same subject.  When I did a check to see how that felt in my body there was quite a bit of resistance to sharing any more of that.

That resistance is what I want to gently explore today.

Regular blog readers know my childhood was no picnic - alcoholic and generally absent father, cold distant female-loathing mother, abused physically, verbally and sexually.  The writing hasn't been ALL about that, but I have been working through the shadow stuff for a long time and the writing reflects that.  When I get tired of that I write about my love of science or my spiritual path.  I do not address the tiny points of light that exist for me in my childhood.  Those little fairy lanterns that lit my way through one craptastic moment to a little oasis where I could exhale.  Oasis strung together by the faintest of spider's silk.

So why was it easier to show people the broken parts?  I don't know.  When I first started writing, I was afraid to show people those parts too, believing they would think less of me if they knew - a legacy from my mother maybe who still believes that things ARE perfect if they simply look perfect to the casual observer.  That if I never let them see how fucked up I was, they might see me as perfect.  The thing is that I am not perfect.  I don't want to be.  Trying to maintain that facade became increasingly difficult and required a lot of energy and lies.  I finally got fed up with it and in a fit of anger let it all go.  I started writing about the shadowbits and my small group encouraged it.  They listened week after week as I prosed or poemed my way through the whole closet of shite.  I made roses out of that manure by writing some hard pieces of such gorgeousness I still can't believe that they are truly from my hand.

Maybe I have become a bit too comfortable there wallowing in the shit like a pig farmer immune to the smell of his charges who eats his lunch even as he mucks out the pig pen.  The peeps are always kinda pushing me to investigate those uncomfy-est of places.  But why this one?  They are such sweet lovely gentle memories.

I have these good memories locked up tightly.  I don't pull them out and brush my fingers over faces departed or sigh for their sweetness.  Don't get me wrong - I will do that in a New York minute for an ex- boyfriend or something my mother said that wounded me - will hunker down in the corner and talk to my preciousssssss memory.  But not these.  These have been hermetically sealed in a vault where they could remain untainted forever.  To even think about writing to them makes me shifty seated.  I don't want to do this.  I don't want to let them out.  I don't want to lose them.  They are my lifeline, all that stood between me and insanity.  They are the sparsely numbered foundation upon which I am built.   Remove any one and the Jenga tower falls.

Last week, I let one squeak out and it made me wobble a bit, but I'm still standing.  So maybe it's possible to let them go - to speak to the memories that are at the very heart of who I am.  Makes me feel naked.  Funny how often writing does exactly that for me.