Blog Darkness

            My last post a few weeks ago pronounced a grain of my reason for starting this blog, to tell my personal truth.  I made a commitment to myself to say the truth as I see it. And, then I stopped posting. 

            What a laugh, huh?  I tell you to expect honesty from me, and then I turn into a turtle with my head tucked ever-so-safely inside.

            Here are some honest-to-goodness things that are going on with me lately. 

            I finished the second trimester with the MTSU Writer’s Loft.  I plan to take the last course for my certificate in September.  My mentor, Charlotte Rains Dixon, has been just awesome.  I have close to two-hundred-and-fifty pages written of my first draft.  I am amazed how much going to the Loft has helped me—a person who started out with writer’s block.

            I still haven’t finished my first draft.  But it is so close, I can envision the ending.  Actually, the other night I saw the most magnificent sunset as I thought about my book’s last scene.  I guess all sunsets are beautiful, but some are monumental.  I haven’t seen one as incredible in twenty years with the orange, blue, and purple colors arranged in such a way I honestly felt I could hear it sing.  The only one I can compare it to was when Alan and I lived in Decatur, AL.  We were dating then and had gone for a walk on the shore of the Tennessee River.  The sunset that night transported us to a serene magical place where tree stumps in the water were black against a maroon sky.  I’ve always felt that particular sunset brought something unlimited to our relationship, like we walked through fairy dust.  I hope the one I saw the other night will bring just as much good to my book.   

            I am treating my family with love, kindness, and hopefully healthy boundaries.  There have always, always been conflicts in my mind around my love for my original family.  One of the promises of Co-dependents Anonymous is “I learn that it is possible for me to mend—to become more loving, intimate, and supportive.  I have the choice of communicating with my family in a way that is safe for me and respectful of them.”  This is such a grace-of-God thing in my life.  

            Easter came late for me. At the first of this year, I was confused by how much my father’s suicide and the religious holiday of Jesus dying for my sins had blended.  This past year I worked with a therapist when I realized the locked-box grief of his death was a major part of my writer’s block.  The therapy work brought up another layer of grief.  I made huge strides in breaking open the writer’s block, but confusion weaseled itself into my feelings about God, about my church life, and about Easter. 

            http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5972462272937973038#editor/target=post;postID=7075698488284050629

            In one of my CoDA meetings, and in the above blog, I said that I wanted to give up Easter for Lent.  A trusted friend really helped me with my feelings about Easter.  She asked if I knew the meaning for Lent and for Easter, that Lent was a time of grief and that Easter became time of renewal.  In my confusion, I tried to give up the perennial qualities of God, and hold on to the grief.  I was thankful for the courage of my friend.  I am thankful for my own courage to hear her.

            There are still issues for me around my church life, but I am seeking guidance. 

Much love,

Karen

Commitment

            This past week my mind’s ruminated on that word, commitment. What is it?  How do I balance it with my own needs?  What is healthy and what isn’t?  How does it fit in with God, with my writing, and my friends?

            I have to say that in my life, I’ve had all sorts of commitment-phobias.  I got married too young.  During my marriage I went to college; I changed career directions twice and still got a degree in something that I never used afterwards.  After my divorce, I stayed single for fourteen years before re-marrying because being committed just scared the hell out of me. 

            What does commitment mean?  Two definitions are that it is a pledge to do something and that it is a state of being bound emotionally or intellectually to an ideal or course of action.  In the last eighteen years, I have continually pledged to live my life with a man that changes from time to time.  I say continually most sincerely; marriage is a long effort.  In the last twelve years, I have lived in one place as a homeowner and have been seriously committed to getting that mortgage paid off.  For ten years or so, we have been members of a church.  Eight years, I’ve been going to codependence anonymous meetings and working the steps.   I’ve worked numerous jobs, but work has been a steady effort.  So I suppose I have gotten over my fear of commitments, somewhat.

            Writing for me has never been about commitment until this past year when I quit my regular job and started the first draft of my novel.  It has been about something as basic as breathing.  I have always used the action of pen-to-paper as a method of meditation, prayer, figuring out what was in my head, making a decision, putting off a decision, coping with grief, and expressing my joys.  You name it, writing has been my friend.  But now that I am devoting more of my life to writing, I’ve found that my commitment issues of youth seem to surface.  I have a god-zillion doubts about my abilities and wonder if anyone would be interested enough to read my work. 

            Doubt has been my biggest component of quitting something.  Those doubts have now surfaced in my church attendance.  I am in grief about church and the Easter season.  This is a hard time of the year for me, but I’ve usually been able to just go along.  I’ve either been very busy at church during Easter, or I’ve been very quiet.  I haven’t openly revealed to them that my father killed himself so close to Easter, although if they have read my blogs, they know that now. There’s a thing about grievers-of-suicide, they don’t open up much about that subject, especially not to church friends.  It’s too easy a fertile ground for human judgments.  And there’s that crying thing that happens with grief—the uncontrollable shit that scares the life out of me.

          I think maybe my new writing direction in life has cracked me too open.  Lately, I’m too vulnerable in church during Easter.  Realistically, I want to give up Easter for lent; actually, I just want to give it up for good. I’m not very good at giving myself permission, I guess.  I wonder how well my Christian friends would think of me after hearing that decision, even if it is for my own self-care.  The idea that Jesus died for me isn’t uplifting; it’s terrifying. 

            Amazingly, my relationship with God hasn’t been affected by my fears.  I believe God loves me with whatever decision I make on Sunday mornings, and doesn’t pet me piteously on the head as if I were just a poor lost soul that can’t get over her father’s death or the post-trauma of it. 

            My soul is secure with God, as I understand God.  Part of turning over my life and will to God has to do with being true to myself.  I believe God’s will for me is to be easy with myself in my grief and worship God however I can.  God’s big enough not to take offense that I don’t want to celebrate the death of Jesus.  Worrying what others think of me in this issue is unhealthy. 

            But  I have to say, I’ll be glad when Easter is over.

Love,

Karen

Danger Zones

“If you avoid what is dangerous, you avoid life.  If you throw yourself into a dangerous place without preparation, you devalue life.  Writing is one the crossroads where what is most disturbing can be explored and investigated without destroying yourself or others.  This is one of the highest purposes of the arts.” ~Bonnie Goldberg

            The above quote comes from the author of a writing companion book, Room to Write.  The page that I read today is something that a friend of mine and I spoke about a couple weeks ago—avoidance of imagination because I might fall off an emotional cliff in my imaginings.  I am afraid of what I might write.  

            I am working toward a Creative Writing certificate thought the MTSU Writers’ Loft.  Each trimester, I have a mentor whom I send three packets of original work, a book essay, and a letter specifying what I am having trouble with or want to know more about.  Charlotte is a wonderfully supportive mentor.  Sometimes, honestly, I think she meaningfully sandwiches her critiques between two good strong reinforcing statements so that I read you are a good writer/you need to ramp up the conflict/you are a good writer.  My last letter to Charlotte was after the conversation I had with one of my writing friends, so I asked my mentor to speak about overcoming fear.  She offered that writing feelings and images is a good way to get something of myself and into another “container.”

            I know where this fear of writing my feelings and images comes from.  After my father’s suicide, I wanted to write a story about a devil in a septic tank and how it enticed my dad to kill himself.  That was really how my mind reacted to his death.  I couldn’t believe that he would have made such a choice, even in the sickness of his depression.  So I invented the idea that a devil made him do it.  Then as I rubbed that story idea over the folds of my mind, imagining the whisperings and fear that my father must have heard and felt, I grew to think that the devil must have followed me home and had started whispering ungodly things to me. I thought I was going crazy.  So if I could scare myself with those thoughts, which even now makes my spine shiver, my stomach tighten-up, and my lips quiver, how will I ever not scare myself insane writing a book of fiction where my imagination is free to make up anything?

            This book suggests preparing myself with “some deep breathing or other centering activity [and] when [I’ve] finished draw a box or circle around the words to contain them.”  The above paragraph is my sincere but contained fear that I might go crazy writing.   So there! The next time I am afraid of writing conflict and tension, I will put it in a box.  I will contain it.

Karen Phillips