Hello, old friend.
Writing is my old friend. The first time that I remember feeling like a writer was in the second grade: I had only been able to read for two years (up until my friend Cheryl P. asked me if I wanted her to read me a book while we were in kindergarten, and I looked at her, shocked, and said something like, "Kids can read?!" and immediately got down to business to learn how), and our teacher asked us to write a myth. I wrote a story about polar bears - how they turned white, I think? - and while we were tasked to write a paragraph or such, I wrote pages. Pages and pages... and I didn't feel done when I turned it in, I felt like I could write forever.
I should rephrase that. I didn't feel like a writer at all - that was akin to feeling like a unicorn, or a Douglas fir tree, or a million dollars. It was unimaginable that I could be a writer, because I didn't feel talented or special - and I was sure that writers were the most talented, special people on the planet - but I knew that I needed to write. If only I had better understood semantics at the tender age of seven, I would have realized that my drive to write meant that I was a writer.
I scribbled in my journals. I wrote poetry. I imagined stories. I submitted a poem to the festival (?) on Mayne Island one summer, and I labored over it. Why I still remember it, I don't know...
Playing on the rocks and sand
I feel a tiny crab gently pinch my hand.
I turn around and see a fish,
And then I hear a gentle "wish.
Seals and otters playfully glide,
Gleefully jumping in the tide...
There was more, but that's all I remember. It wasn't Rumi, but it was the truth of my summers, and somehow I'd captured something that I felt about what it meant to be barefoot and lost in the tidepools of the rocky beaches. When I won a ribbon, I was genuinely astonished - why would anyone want to read something I'd written? Why would anyone relate to my experiences? I think I was somewhere between 9-11 when I wrote it.
In junior high, the yearbook published a poem I'd written. I refused to let them put my name on it, sure that it was a trick, that maybe some mean girl was mocking me. I don't know why I felt that way: I wrote because I had to, and my teacher submitted it because he liked it, and why wouldn't someone else like it?
A couple of years ago I decided to get published within the year, no matter how small the publication, and I set it as a New Year's Resolution. A couple of weeks later, I saw a call for letters to the New York Times, and I put something together over lunch at work and submitted it between classes. They published it, and my heart sang - I think they published 40 letters of the 1000 or so they received, and I was so proud. So proud that I was terrified of the feeling, and I didn't write anything for close to a year after that.
And then I decided to write my book, the Serious Book that was about Important Things that had been floating in my brain for years. I worked on it, fell short, worked more... and stopped again, frozen once more.
And then I went to my friend's wedding - the famous friend, the one who is (among other things) a writer, and she introduced me to all her of wonderful friends as "she's a writer" and I felt like crawling in a hole, because I knew that I was a fraud with constant writers' block and a brain prone more to fog than brilliance.
And yet...
And yet, I long to write, and I know that there is something there there.
So I'm changing my ways. Slowly, but surely, I am..
I'm letting go of the idea that I have to be smart, or good, or important.
Release.
I'm opening up my heart, my mind, my soul to the knowledge that whatever I write, it will be enough. I long for the world to read it and find delight and healing... but even if I am the only one who finds delight and healing* it will be enough, because I was born to write. I'm ready for the gift to appear; I'm ready to take risks and ask for help and dedicate time and try.
I have been holding tight to some old ideas, passed down through the generations to me. Ideas like "life is hard so work harder" or "you are nothing and nobody" and "what makes you think you're so special?" and - on my bad days, when my father's words echo in my brain - "you're stupid and lazy and what the hell's the matter with you?!"
It's time to release. Whether I'm a genius or an idiot is irrelevant. I'm letting go of all of those definitions of myself (which were really definitions given to too many in the world) and receive.
Receive.
I keep thinking about the imagine of a fist, holding tight to whatever treasures it contains. The fist protects, the fingers clutching the gifts, fearful of dropping them or having them taken, the fingers squeeze until they cramp and the fingernails bite the palms and the weary soul says "just hang on..." I've been hoarding my idea of writing like that, holding it tight to me to protect it, in fear that if it sees the light it will crumble to dust, or reveal its ugliness, or I will simply find that it doesn't exist.
But...
But if I open my hands, unfurling my fingers like flower petals, then the gifts can breathe. Then my writing can be in the world, open to receive new ideas, new readers, new life. If I open my hands, I might find a butterfly landing on them, or the warmth of sunshine, or a dog's wet nose, or the hand of a belove.
I'm going to try very, very hard, with all the might I have within me, to release fear so that I can feel the light. Whatever the shape of the thing I hold in my hands, it is suffocating in my fist. What will happen if I loosely clutch it, hands open, so that I can see all of it, from every angle? What does it really look like, anyway, after so many years in the dark? If it's more raisin than fruit I couldn't blame it - I haven't given it sunshine or nourishment; the rain hasn't been able to reach its skin.
I love the feeling of rain on my skin: an upturned face to the sky, mouth open to catch the drops. I love dashing through puddles, giggling as I get drenched. I am a lucky one: I've always had a place to go when I was finally too cold and wet to stay outside, and there is such joy in toweling off damp hair, putting on warm cozy clothes, and curling up with a hot mug of tea as the rain pelts the windows. Sometimes the rain is cold and the puddles muddy or greasy... but the joy of coming home, getting dry and warm, is only possible if one experiences the rain first... otherwise it's just another day walking in the door.
I've started taking notes on my phone when I get ideas, and I've got a slim red notebook that I carry in my purse to write down ideas. Every time I go for a walk or a run by myself, new ideas pop into my head. Stories of witches (oh, I'm releasing the idea that I have to be brilliant and wise, and I don't care about anything but telling my stories now, so maybe I don't have to be so serious), essays about mothers and daughters, small poems about my secret heart.
I have it in my head that my writer's block is connected to my lover's block: that believing in myself enough to write is my true self love, and that only when I have self love like that will I find my true love. It's a lovely symmetry, and life is rarely quite so symmetrical, but I think... I think maybe I'm right. And I feel myself letting go of the blocks, ready for what comes next in a creative life.
(Do I curse myself to put that in writing, like a wish that can't come true if I tell it? Or do I manifest my heart's desire? Well... whatever it is, I'm letting go of that old fear.)
I have things to say, and I have love to give.
So it's time to write. It's time to love. And in between, I think I'll go on a walk. It's teacher summer, and I'm hitting the reset button on what doesn't serve me. I'm ready to be ME.
*healing: My stories spread love and light in the world, and offer healing. The world longs for healing, and I long to heal. Does that make me a healer as well as a writer? Let it be so.
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