Nothing To Do But Write

Orignally posted on Subversive Verses 6/29/2014


Sometime I avoid writing like the plague. I don't know if this is human nature, but I kid myself into thinking I'd rather sit and stare at the blank page than fill it with something that may bring me some ease or even joy. Well, writing is hard. I don't think you should believe anyone who says it isn't. If it pours out of you like some kind of miracle, then enjoy it. I don't think anyone can expect that and not be disappointed. It does not happen like that for me, and I have tried to learn to not be too hard on myself. 

Is it a talent to be a writer, or is it sweat and toil? Is it a bit of both? When I can manipulate the quiet moments in my mind that allow me to slow down and write, I can be free. I see that my greatest obstacle is my own self. I sit at my desk and look out into the world and am hit in a million different directions of ideas, memories, fears, desires and wild living textures. How can you look around you and not be inspired by this amazing world? I cannot allow myself to give in to the noisy brain and muffle out the solitude and silence that my writing mind craves so much. Solitude is hard for me. Silence is deafening. I like to drink and smoke and laugh and be surrounded by people. Its the softness in humanity that keeps me from hitting the bottom. Why am I so afraid of the bottom when I know that is where the richness lies? Why do I keep myself from tasting the satisfying experiences that make me who I am? Embarrassment, harshness, self loathing, and other useless traits of being afraid in your own skin. Can I write these feelings away as easily as I can drink them away? I don't know. 

I had a friend. 
This is a familiar beginning to many stories I have to tell. 

I had a friend. In some way it started good and ended terribly wrong. I was a very sensitive child (surprise) and I can remember how easily I was hurt when a friend would stop being a friend to me. At that age I suppose it is easy to move from one person to the next and we begin to learn the social structures that we are to live and work in for the rest of our miserable lives. We get hard, we get mean, or we get hurt. We manifest that pain into harshness, cruelty or totally withdraw. If you are blessed you fall somewhere in between. 

I had a friend. She was very nice to me. 

When I was in the fifth grade something changed in me. I spent half the year in a coma which had me following the social grooves without skipping a beat. I had a crew of mean girls that accepted me, zits, fat and all into their squad. I was making good grades and I was dressing in the top of 1980s fashion. I had what seemed to be the perfect line to get me where I should be. The popular kids liked me and forgotten all about the orthopedic shoes in 3rd grade and the crying fits of 4th grade. I was in. 

I had a friend, she was very nice to me and one day I broke her heart. 

Stella had big green eyes and dishwater blond hair in lazy curls that hit her shoulder. She was short and a little stout but lovable in her knitted sweaters and baggy corduroy pants. She wore black rimmed glasses and she was fantastically smart. We talked about all sorts of things and she had a bookish mom and dad. I went to her house one day and reveled in her house filled with maps, bookshelves and exotic decorations from other countries. It was a far cry from my wood panelling living room with world book encyclopedias from 1968. I adored her. I wanted to be her. 

When the mean girls started to bring me in I found out fast that I couldn't be friends with Stella. She was a nerd. She never wore blue jeans or make up and she sat in the front of class and always raised her hand. The Kingpin Meany knew we had been friends and would do mean things to Stella to see what I would do. I would watch helplessly with a cold exterior my friend being bullied and terrorized. She never made eye contact with me when they were tripping her, stealing things from her desk or calling her names. One day the meanies and I were joking around and I said I thought that Stella had started stuffing her bra.They had a good cackle over that and Kingpin told me that I should go and ask her the next time the teacher left the classroom. I felt sick to my stomach because I knew I was going to have to do it. It wasn't a suggestion, it was an order. 

This is very hard for me to write. I had a friend, she was very nice to me, she was smart and adorable and everything I wanted to be. Her parents had a nice big house with a swimming pool and her mother baked hand made cupcakes with pennies baked into the bottom of the paper muffin cups for good luck. She wore hand knitted sweaters and once gave me a knitted beret that she worked on all summer for Christmas. She laughed like an elfin queen and she had a garden of flowers in her yard with butterflies. She gave me flashlight when I spent the night and was scared of the dark. She was a good friend, and she was very nice to me. 

In front of the class, my fatness in baby blue slacks and sweater vest over button down striped shirt.
Finger pointed down on her head
Under horn rimmed eyes
quivering lips
I broke my friends heart
to the laughter of sloppy sweating boys
and scared little girls 
tittering giggles
Stella Harper
with mouth open in a dry 'O'
turning pink as 
a salmon
eyes slick and watery
as the fish's blank dead stare

Something changed in me that day. 
I woke up.

I finished that year in a general decline of grades, social standing and self esteem. I stopped hanging out with the meanies and they retaliated in full force. I didn't care anymore. I stopped wearing my preppy clothes. I got beat up a few times. I started bringing my tape recorder to school and would hang out on the top of the monkey bars listening to top 40 Casey Kasem recorded on memorex tapes. Sometimes someone would make their way up to the top and listen with me. Most of the time, I was alone. Stella's family moved that summer and I never saw her again. 

I have never forgotten how easy it is to be mean. I can be mean. I can be good. The meaner I get, the more closed off things become. The noisier my brain gets and the more I can't stop the chatter and remember these things. We are the walking scars of our past. We wear makeup and expensive clothes and cut our hair and curl our eyelashes over the scars that rest inside. Can you write yourself out of a scar? Can you make it a part of your landscape without tripping you up over and over again? I don't know what this post is about, but I feel better for writing it. Maybe that is the answer. There is nothing to do but write.