I write because I must. I write because if I don't my mind becomes a dark, deserted alley in which scary creatures lurk ready to pounce , holding me hostage and rendering me unrecognizable to myself.
I started writing because there was no one else to talk to. The things that I needed to talk about either got me in trouble or got me feeling like I was some kind of freak.
Freshly remarried on the rebound, mother and my new "father" shunted me off to Florida in the summer of 1966. I was enraged.I was ripped away from a world I had started to build for myself.
If nothing else, my parents' divorce let me know that my mom and dad were individuals with private agendas that had little to do with me. A divorce teaches a kid that they are not the center of their parent's world. New wives, new husbands, new sisters and new brothers were the world into which I was thrown without choice. I hated every damned piece of it. I was filled with an anger so hot that I sought refuge in a world of my own which had nothing to do with family.
If you look for me in the 1966 Plainwell, Michigan yearbook you will find me. I am the pale girl with the black watch kilt and knee socks and the unattractive black pointy eyeglasses. I am standing on a tier along with others for the journalism club photograph.
It was during that, my freshman year, I discovered I had a mind- a good mind that was inquisitive and equally important I had found others with whom I could share this part of me.
I eagerly awaiting Study Hall each afternoon. In hushed tones my cohorts and I discussed such books such as John Howard Griffith's Black Like Me or Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. We debated the newly passed Civil Rights Act and worked feverishly to dissect the cryptic lyrics of Bob Dylan's recently released Subterranean Homesick Blues.
The fact that I was not one of the a pretty, popular girls who looked sexy in their angora sweaters and tight wool skirts. no longer mattered. The fact that I was the only kid in town who had divorced parents (yes, divorce in Waspish midwestern small towns was rareL I had found a niche into which I fit.
On a night in mid June a bit beofre the first day of summer I had stood in our foyer clutching frantically at teh first boy I ever loved as I postponed that inevitable goodbye. next morning with my face swollen from tears i joined Mom in the yellow ford Fairlane packed down with a parakeet named Flower tomove to the lnad of eternal summer.
During that lonely summer of my fourteenth year that my love affair with words got serious. I spent hour upon hour reading and compiling lists of new words that I diligently recorded in a tiny notebook. I would read them last thing before bed and first thing in the morning. Reading and studying made me feel good inside. It gave a form to my day. It gave me something of my own that no one could take from me.
And it was at the modern built-in desk in my new room in our new modern house with the flying roof That I started writing what I referred to as "Letters to God."
I don't recall possessing a strong faith in the existence of the "God" of the churches I attended as a child and certainly not the God of the Sunday school class at St. Lukes in which we little children were forced to sit still and silent in small hardwook chairs. The already cold high-ceilinged room was made chillier by the presence a stern, unsmiling teacher who scared me with pictures of scary- looking angels and tales of what happens to children who don't learn the Bible. The church was not a soft place.
But the library was. During my junior high years my favorite escape during had often been the town's library- a once grand Victorian house whose maze of rooms provided the perfect place for a young girl to hide from the world. The ugliness of my parent's divorce coupled with my ever growing sense of isolation could not find me among the stacks of books. Here was a place of escape and fantasy. Here was a place where no one would or could disturb me. Here were the words.
Mom would only allow me so much time alone in my room behind my desk before she would start her tirade outside my closed door. "A normal 14 year old girl does not want to sit inside her room on a beautiful day. Why don't you go to the pool and make some friends.? she wailed.
I would not budge. I read those books. I made those lists, and I continue to write those letters to God. It was a big part of what I wanted to do, but it was also a wonderful way to get back at her for hauling my teenage self to this hot and sticky land of relentless sunshine- a place where most of our neighbors had gray hair and the lady next door decorated the spikes of her Spanish Bayonet plant with the pink and green styrofoam nests which cradled grocery store egg from the local Winn Dixie.
forcing me to dress, put me in the car and dropped me off at a softball field.
There I stood in my aqua striped surfer shirt and matching shorts. I was thin, tan shy and bookish. I did not know how to "make friends". Those kids alrady had each other. I had been thrust into a the closed society of teenagers most of whom had known one another since elementary school.
To ask myself at the age of sixty, "Who am I really" , or How is it I must now live takes a courage and committment that I am not certain I possess.and So my writing helps lead me to edges that the frightened part of me wants to avoid.
Just last evening a friend asked me if writing helped me make sense of things. I replied that I did not think so. I only know that after I have written a piece, I do feel a sense of relief.
