I am discovering just how painful a daily writing practice can be. I'm revising essays I wrote a decade ago and parsing out what stories to include in this larger piece, what to leave out, what to rearrange and what needs to be newly written. Some pain comes from revisiting the past, and some comes from trying to write something, anything, compelling.
It is both an advantage and a handicap to revisit childhood memories through the lens of time, therapy and maturity. I felt pretty bullied as a kid. But some of the folks I considered to be my nemesis in those early years are now adults I care about a great deal. I even have a level of compassion for those I am not close to because I have done enough work on my own shit to understand that we all had shit as kids. We all had traumas and pain and stories. And I can also see how my issues and behaviors might have aggravated the hell out of the kids around me. I think that I often inadvertently set myself up to be the loser.
So the question becomes how many of these stories to tell, and how much responsibility do I take for the pain or trauma inflicted on me. Do I focus on my truth in the moment, or the truth I have discovered along the way.
Today's struggle is in balancing the need to offer a whole picture within the theme I have chosen for this project with the conflicting realities of current and old memory.
No comments:
Post a Comment