Sometimes (like now) I come to the writing desk pissed off. For a variety of reasons. First, I just got both kids out of the house and I can breathe again for a few hours. Two, I just heard a talk by Kathy Griffin about Danny Masterson that got me all fired up about how society minimizes sexual perpetrators and then stigmatizes victims. It’s sick and as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, this firms my above headline. I wrote my book No Longer Denying Sexual Abuse: Making The Choices That Can Change Your Life to be pissed off, and then offer some healing advice to others who sat in denial too. We don’t get to let what people have done to us affect our greatest life that is too brief on this earth. So while I did write the book marginally pissed off in moments, I also had an editor who put the brakes on, or should we say, reframed some passages.
So when is it okay to write when you want to rip everyone around you a new asshole? I would say always, just don’t get so attached to the writing that you can’t go back later and edit it and reframe for the reader to also have an experience. I am reframing right now as I speak. Moments ago I was walking around my house yelling at cat hair balls and teen bras discarded under the kitchen table. I also am confused why my kids think wringing the toothpaste like it is a face cloth is effective, and continue to do it no matter how many times I say “Roll from the bottom.” This level of pissed is magnified when I realize the Brita filter is about three months late, and the roof guys just showed up at the condo complex to fix a part of the structure that to me has no meaning… but my clogged toilet? I have to write three emails and sent a triplicate to someone named Bob to get a snake up in this place.
None of this writing has tremendous meaning but it can if I get to the feelings behind it that may be relatable to other people. I am tired from having Covid. I got over it fast but it lingers. You feel like there is still something awful in your body, and last night I tried to go to bed at 8:45 only to lie there until 11:45 hot and miserable, feeling off. So I am powerless over a lot right now. The Covid virus lingering, my kid leaving for college in a week and teaching her that adults make their own dinner, feeling a disconnect with my sense of self and my purpose in this world… so in other words, I am sad but I am happy and I am optimistic but I am scared of change coming. I am also welcoming and excited about change. What is this to put in words besides say it and ask, do you relate?
But how do we write all that in a riveting essay or something people want to read? You tell your story. You tell the whole story. You talk about how you can be three parts of yourself in one car ride. You talk about how you can love your child and hate them at the same time. You talk about how you want to get married and then you are terrified you will be boring or you will take the relationship for granted. You write about how all day long there is noise in our head that won’t give us a break and then there is relief in a free See’s Candy or a walk along the pier and you see a dolphin. We don’t go to the candy shop or the dolphin enough. We are in Smart and Final more than we see hummingbirds and there is something wrong with that equation.
What is wrong with writing about disenchantment and frustration when you are simultaneously happy? I am doing it right now. I laid on a grassy hill yesterday with my 14 year old after a hike and thought, I have no complaints in the world. I have so much to be grateful for, but that does not mean I have moments of spiritual darkness where I feel insecure like right now. I am NOT insecure about feeling annoyed with the world, but I am trepidatious about the time I am wasting doing so.
I want to get to the bottom of situations and find solutions and I also know that my answer to problems is usually sub par. God has much better solutions than me. So the true story I should be writing is the lack of spiritual fitness and how I can do better in that area.
But I am not writing a book about any of this information so why bother?
If you write enough, and look at what you write, and do it in a way that you start to see a theme, you realize you have an actual story and trajectory and plot. You can see the narrative if you write about something long enough. I wrote a whole book about buying a house to eventually see my theme was home and courage. I started to do posts about it and I was on fire. I had written so many essays on home and independence, and real estate, before I found my 30 minutes of speaking fire. If you rant on a blog or a column and people read it and like it, you are touching a part of them for a reason. See what people say. Listen and then heck, rant some more.
Today this post is me showing you that sometimes we just write when we are pissed and throw it out into the world and say, you know what, I write and here it is. Plus it is 9/11 and nothing makes me more upset than the pain and agony of a collective people and their families twenty years ago that still oddly feels like yesterday. Please stop for one second and say a prayer.
Now I feel better. See? Maybe you feel better. If not make a Spotify play list like you were a teenager and name it “road trip” and then take a drive and listen to it. Helps me every time.
Thoroughly enjoyed reading your rant today Kim. Agreed that 911 seems oddly like yesterday and the weight of collective trauma is hefty to say the least. You inspire even when caught in the sea overwhelm… thank you 🙏