First Aid

I am a writer.

It is very strange. How can something that is extremely self-evident be so self-denied?

In my teen years of rebellion, emotional morass of confusion and depression, isolation and resentment I wrote letters to my mother. What I could not say in person the pen and paper gave me voice to. She never responded nor referred to these once received. I also never got a beating or was punished for the contents that were expressed in them. That may be the first sweetness of this calling.

My very first public poem was in my junior year in high school. Public because I had someone else read it. I came into class and offered my friend Grace if she wanted to read it. A few layers of surprise in this act revealed itself; that I would share it, she would say yes, and finally, with eyes welled with tears upon finishing it, she says, "Can I keep it?" I laughed and said, "Of course!"

When I read somewhere that journaling is great practice, I reacted as though I discovered the wheel. It came at the right time, my impending nuptials. A father who doesn't think your choice of spouse is good enough; future-in-laws who want to spend money on a wedding when you'd rather elope; budgeting with a fiancé that isn't a believer in budgeting; Molotov cocktail for a disastrous celebration. I wrote like a fiend. Peace prevailed to the end.

It was the year of the most acrimonious union-management bargaining at work. The email exchanges between the parties read professionally. The tone was all but. After weeks of reading the volleys of accusations and mistrust, it broke me. I jumped in the fray and wrote from a desperate need of sanity in the space. The union member who had been taking the lead on this particular battle, after a couple more much needed clarification points finally took place, put his bullets away. On the side he wrote praising my writing and said I ought to do it more.

One September, after 12 years of marriage, I wrote my husband. In one page and five short paragraphs, I told him I wanted a divorce. The document was the finality I needed to feel the reality of what I had long decided. In the weeks that followed, I penned a letter to his aunt, quite dear to me in many ways, revealing what was underneath of what seemingly was a perfect marriage in everyone's eyes. All I remember from long and loving response: Keep writing. You're good at it.

Emotions are the fires that burn me into submission to write. As a Libra rising, Aquarius Sun, emotions are messy, ugly, undesirable. I'd rather the spiritual ascetics of an even and balanced equanimity to all of life. That's the ideal. Reality is this.