On (not) being a writer

I don't know when I first thought I wanted to be a writer.

Scratch that.

I don't know when I started writing.

Scratch that too.

I am not a writer. I don't even know if I want to be one. I just write. Always have, always will.

Ahhhh... Now we're on to something. Not that the nature of this "something" is especially clear, of course. After all, it's not as if I've never seen my name in print. As an academic, I have published a fair number of articles and book chapters over the years. That counts, right? Then there is this blog, whose posts do not appear magically out of cyber-thin air. Quite the contrary– much like academic writing, channeling these thoughts through pen onto paper actually requires fairly serious butt-in-chair time (yes, I am that odd creature who writes most of her blog posts longhand).

Okay then. Perhaps I am in fact a writer. Cool. Well, cool except for one little problem. I haven't yet written the thing I want to write. I am possessed by a pretty huge, mostly true story that's just dying to get out. I'm talking wakes me up in the middle of the night just to remind me it's still here. In case, you know, my memory was wiped by space aliens or I somehow otherwise managed to forget. As if. Anyway, it's here, it's real, and I bet at least a few people would read it if I could just coax it out. Yep. Coax. As badly as it wants out in the dead of night, it is awfully shy when it sees my open notebook. Go figure.

This push-and-pull has been going on for a while now. As in years. And it's time for it to end. This story is going to get the attention it deserves, and not just "when I have the time" (as if that were a thing!). To make that happen, I've done two things. One, I found a writing group. Well, it found me. Point is, I now have a safe and structured writing home where my story and I will be accountable to each other. And two, I've decided to nurture other people's stories by writing for and managing the ATN blog. ATN stands for The Attachment & Trauma Network, an organization of not-so-ordinary angels who have thrown many a lifeline to families just like mine.

So... stay tuned. It's going to happen. I will wrestle my story into a book or die trying. Meanwhile, please, check us out at ATN. It's an amazing place.

The Attachment & Trauma Network

The story I want to read

Maybe you've heard the statistic: 80% of couples parenting a special needs child end up divorced.

Then again, maybe you haven't. I hadn't until I heard it repeated like a mantra as my own marriage fell apart. I think people were trying to reassure me, to let me know that with those kinds of odds, I was in no way alone. Perhaps it helped. Could it be that in a weird way I was comforted by being in the majority for once? Maybe. I don't know, though. That doesn't really sound like me.

Besides, I was alone. 80 percent is meaningless when you're the one curled up on the front porch with your insomnia, watching the stars, wondering how on earth you are going to raise three humans to adulthood. Heck, there are days when you don't know if you can manage pants!

One such sleepless night, I decided to research that number. Although 80% is almost certainly inflated, the threat to marriages is real, with sources suggesting special needs families have divorce rates at least 5-10% higher than those of the general population. For me, though, well, the cracks in my marriage had been there for a long time. The extra stress of a child's illness just turned them into chasms.

At any rate, the exact number is beside the point. Statistics have their place, but stories aren't made of numbers. They're made of people. And what I want to know is this: where are the stories about people like us? families like mine? women like me? Where are our novels, our plays, our films? Where is our epic love story? I've mostly found two versions: a) shattering tragedy full of heartache, estrangement, institutions, and death, or b) preposterous Disneyfication featuring an improbable cure and/or a white knight sweeping in to save the day. What ever happened to the truth being in the middle?

I hear you. If it's truth I want, I should read a memoir. Better yet, write one. Guess what? I am. There are parts of our story I want need to tell. But it's not enough. Much as I love memoir, fiction is where I go to fall in love. Nothing beats the intoxication of other worlds, other lives. I just wish sometimes those other worlds were a little more like ours, those fictional characters a little more like us.

We all need a story

"Tell me a story," I said as I snuggled in, both of us having decided to make peace with my insomnia. Somewhat bewildered and probably uncomfortable, my significant other replied that he didn't have any. This, in retrospect, could be the moment our relationship started not to work as well as it once had. Then again, maybe not. He actually had plenty of stories, tales from a life often different from mine, words that I still hold close to my heart. They remind me that just because a story might not end as you'd hoped, that doesn't mean it ended badly. It might simply be that it's time for a new chapter.


People without stories do exist, however. Traumatized children, for example. It's not that their lives don't have events, moods, feelings, settings, characters. They do. A lot happens, actually. And some...a lot...of it is awful beyond imagination. But because the narrative arc did not unfold the way it should have in the child's first years on earth, they essentially lose the ability to grasp, much less tell, their own story. They hold it at a distance, trying not only to bury the past, but also to avoid the future. After all, the elements of their early story let them down. Why take that risk again?


Needless to say, this breaks my heart. It breaks for them and all they have suffered. It breaks because their story literally scares them half to death (and yes, I mean "literally" - check their heart rate and pupils during therapy). What's more, their refusal of their own story can make them resistant to other stories as well. If there is one gift I have always wanted to give, besides the obvious one of unconditional love, it would be words. I want children to have not just their words, but also all the rest, the ones that create word-journeys to other worlds. Maybe those words, those worlds, will give them what they need. Maybe they will let them live often happily, always wholly, ever after.

A little perspective

"After reading a lot of overheated puffery about your new cook, you know what I'm craving? A little perspective. That's it. I'd like some fresh, clear, well seasoned perspective. Can you suggest a good wine to go with that?

Very well. Since you're all out of perspective and no one else seems to have it in this bloody town, I'll make you a deal. You provide the food, I'll provide the perspective, which would go nicely with a bottle of Cheval Blanc 1947."

--Anton Ego, Ratatouille

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Early on January 22, it started snowing. In the short time it took me to shower and find khakis and a sweater, the world had turned white, and by the time I was ready to leave, the roads, well, they were not ready. At all. Thursday, there was a lull, but that turned out to be the literal calm before the storm. Friday, the snow resumed, pausing only to make room for half an inch of ice. It stopped sometime on Saturday, but not before it had closed schools and roads, and, in much of our area, turned out the lights.

We were among the lucky ones. We lost power for maybe six hours on Friday and again on Sunday. In between it would flicker, but never went away entirely. Still, it was cold outside. Three degrees, to be exact, when I woke up Sunday to the utter silence of unpowered appliances. I spent most of the morning trying not to move, thereby transforming myself a sandwich made up of blankets for filling, the cats and me for bread.

Usually when bad things happen, I can quell my whines and worries by remembering all the ways in which others are worse off than me and directing compassion toward them. So I began to consider those whose power hadn't been on since Friday, then those who don't even have the option of indoor electricity and water. I stretched my imagination to all the displaced people in the world, victims of other people's wars, who have no shelter at all. My three-bedroom ranch almost seemed nice, electricity or no. But I guess the cold had frozen my empathy muscle, because that didn't work for long.

So, I decided to read. I donned gloves and a hat and went for something short, using a bit of precious mobile battery to check the New York Times. I clicked on "We Asked, You Answered: Your Favorite Blizzard Things." Epic fail. While I can play the part of spoiled urbanite as well as the next girl, it took very few gushing evocations of the glories of sea salt and gourmandise for my iPhone to find itself very nearly hurled into the nearest snowbank. Said snowbank being dangerously close to the house, I instead put the phone on airplane mode, and, for good measure, in another room, then settled fully into my sulk. 

One can only sulk for so long, however, even in three degrees, so I decided to try reading again. I mean, reading IS one of my great loves, and seriously, what else did I have to do? So I pulled out my Kindle and plunged head-first into a thriller. I was soon so absorbed that I actually failed to see the faint glow of the bedside lamp or hear the hum of the appliances as they came back to life. You have to admit...that's some book! It was creepy, it was just-real-enough-but-not-too-real... and it was exactly what I needed. Maybe I was being a wimp, but the fact was, I'd had as much "real" as I could handle. What I needed was fiction. And so this time, as so many times before, it was the world of imagination that gave me a generous serving of perspective. (I'll let you decide what went in the glass.)

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p.s. I am not the only one for whom the wintry weather has led to questions of perspective. For another take, read Omid Safi's excellent On Being post, "The Slush Puddles of Life."