writing to survive

writing to survivehttp://www.writingtosurvive.com/index.phpyou'd miss me without itenwritingtosurviveCopyright 2008-2010, Jennifer Trinkle2012-01-29T07:06:44-08:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 Sun, 29 Jan 2012 07:06:44 -080037.889125-122.29371http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/writingtosurvivehttp://feedburner.google.comSubscribe with My Yahoo!Subscribe with NewsGatorSubscribe with My AOLSubscribe with BloglinesSubscribe with NetvibesSubscribe with GoogleSubscribe with PageflakesSubscribe with PlusmoSubscribe with The Free DictionarySubscribe with Bitty BrowserSubscribe with Live.comSubscribe with Excite MIXSubscribe with WebwagSubscribe with Podcast ReadySubscribe with WikioSubscribe with Daily RotationThe landscape of changewritingtosurviveFacing fearsFriends2012-01-29T07:06:44-08:00http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/writingtosurvive/~3/N7vyvI87rdU/the_landscape_of_change.phphttp://www.writingtosurvive.com/files/the_landscape_of_change.php#unique-entry-id-558 new shoes

The personal shift, the click of a new way of thinking or being or feeling, can be a painful thing, like a birth or even a death, a mourning of the person we once were and the life forever altered. I want to offer the old me flowers, give her a hug, tell her I’m proud of her for doing the best she could, that it was ok to cling, to hold on tightly in the face of the unknown. And here I am, all shiny and new and hopeful, better rested, attempting to be better fed. My vision is so clear that I need to squint in order not to blind myself, to get caught up in the sharp lines of the landscape, the horizon with its budding trees, the ground of dirt and meadow grass, glinting quartz tucked here and there between profusions of spicy wildflowers and everywhere birds and dragonflies and the music of nature.

The air is cold with a hint of the warmth to come. My picnic basket is packed with healthy, delicious food that I’ve prepared myself, and in the grove of trees off in the distance, the rest of my life awaits. There are people I’ve never met, eagerly anticipating a new connection, and the people I’ve known for years, my close loved ones, the friends who are part of me, they are mingling with the new, happy to see me change and to be a part of it. There will be feasting and dancing and when the sun goes down we will gather by a bonfire fed by the things that didn't work in my life, irrational fear and muddy sadness and self-protective separation going up in flames. I will sit near the fire, my son tucked close to me, his father next to him, both a vital part of my transformation.

The rules I set for myself, the ones where I showed my goodness through self-sacrifice (a conscious choice, not a martyrdom) and removal from the world, do not apply to this new self. I can have an outside life and a happy child. I might even be capable of long-term connection, might allow this heart of mine to sink into true, unselfish love and support.

This shift is permanent, not that there won’t be trouble along the way. I know myself. I can be true to her, authentic, present. I don’t need anyone to show me the path, though I do need people to share the journey with me, to accept my weaknesses and share joy in my strengths, while I do the same for them.

This is a better representation than yesterday's (deleted) post about my inner state. More sleep and a conscious attempt to eat more help with my equilibrium.

Image of the shoes I'll wear on the journey, because I want to look natty along the way.

]]>http://www.writingtosurvive.com/files/the_landscape_of_change.php#unique-entry-id-558Cognitive dissonancewritingtosurviveWriting prompts2012-01-25T10:32:23-08:00http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/writingtosurvive/~3/hW7wmDhiDLk/cognitive_dissonance%20.phphttp://www.writingtosurvive.com/files/cognitive_dissonance%20.php#unique-entry-id-556 image by babo gabo

I am a desperate housewife with a woman on the side, a dog next to me, and cats waiting outside the door. I used to hold up liquor stores and convenience marts after school, me in my plaid Catholic girls’ school uniform, with the knee socks and the loafers and my light blue eyes and wispy blonde locks. Those clerks never knew what was coming, the prancing girl, gleaming gun pointed, showing her crooked-toothed grin. The cognitive dissonance between my appearance and my actions made it hard for them to identify me later. They simply couldn’t believe it.

I play with the edge and no one even knows that I’m doing it. You may think you’ve got me pegged, but you’re wrong. My soft exterior belies my second carapace, the protective armor I developed over time to keep my integrity, my authenticity. Where my heart used to be, there is fire, my hands and feet are ice, and my mind is calm and cool and driven by anger layered under years of self-control.

I love children and animals and kind men, but I have a soft spot for the rebels, the ones who must be free. I look at them and I see what I want for myself, an open life, a fluid carapace that falls away when needed, a life only controlled when necessary. They ride the edge without resentment, take on stray dogs and people in need of a schooling. I watch them from my window on their motorcycles, with their tattoos or piercings or pointy shoes. I watch them and feel my carapace start to dissolve, with lust, want, desire – or maybe I’m just making plans for my future.

Three things most people don’t know about me:

That I learned how to shoot a shotgun in sixth grade
Where the fiction ends and the truth begins in my writing
The true content of my innermost thoughts

From the prompt "Allow me to introduce myself," which is always the first prompt of the Round Robin (including telling three things that most people don't know about me). This is the first time I went for something outside of the standard. Very lightly edited.

I really wanted to write more today, to take some time to craft something, but I am working on very little sleep and the stuff I am coming up with is so dark and filled with loathing that I don't think it belongs here or anywhere. I have to accept that today will not be productive for writing and acknowledge that when I am this tired, moments of levity are hard to come by.

Image by bábo gábo.

]]>http://www.writingtosurvive.com/files/cognitive_dissonance%20.php#unique-entry-id-556Truth or darewritingtosurviveQuotidian existence2012-01-23T06:03:57-08:00http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/writingtosurvive/~3/pS6Y--xb-Es/truth_or_dare.phphttp://www.writingtosurvive.com/files/truth_or_dare.php#unique-entry-id-554 image by Allison Marchant http://www.flickr.com/photos/carbonated/2183889106/in/photostream/

image by Allison Marchant http://www.flickr.com/photos/carbonated/2183889106/in/photostream/

I woke up angry this morning. It is a good kind of anger, the sort that gets one moving, allows for clarity of vision and for action. It’s freedom and I’m not going to take it anymore and who do you think you are, anyway?

Maybe it was those dreams of French hackers who took over my Facebook account, adding me to groups on postmodernism and cooking, on philosophies of sophistry, on European pop groups and flexible sexuality. Maybe I was too hot last night. Maybe it was the stomachache I went to bed with that could have been the beginning of a night of anguish but was held off with pills. Maybe I expected too much. Maybe this is my protective carapace in action – just try to reach me through this hidden, hard shell. Go ahead. Try.

The house gleams, clean from floor to fur-free floor (with some exceptions). The day will be gray and blustery and I will conquer worlds from the filtered light of cloud cover. I have to-do lists. I have fires to feed. In my mind there is a heated swimming pool in a luxurious addition to a house I’ve never been in. The water shimmers, it moves slightly as if the earth beneath it is adjusting itself. I stand on the lip, feet wet, in my bathing cap and my bathing suit from seventy years ago (the fabric is heavy and the water binds it to my skin). I do not face the pool, but somehow I make the backwards dive, smooth, clean, triumphant, body sharp as a knife.

In the morning I drink coffee. In the afternoon, hot water. At night, beer and wine. When resourceful, present, I cook every night. I improvise, it’s like jazz or being on stage, and so what if the audience is small and my work, my art, hidden?

I am not supposed to be beholden to my moods, to let emotional whim control my day and how I see myself (it’s an Ennegram type four thing, and it makes sense). If I tie my stability to my every strong feeling, I am bound to implode. But there are days when I feel strong and confident, when I am open, and there are days when I feel strong and confident in a defensive way. I like to ride these feelings when I have them, even if I am shadow-boxing in the living room by the heat of a midday fire, alone except for the animals, making the air move around us, watching the raindrops on the window merge and take each other down.

My body and my mind are my own. I am sovereign over this land. Try and catch me, try and categorize me, take what you see and make it into something else. Go ahead. Try.

I dare you.

Image originally by Margaret Chute of Dorothy Sebastian and Joan Crawford (!) in 1927; scanned by Allison Marchant.

I feel better now.

]]>http://www.writingtosurvive.com/files/truth_or_dare.php#unique-entry-id-554Tenacious mewritingtosurviveOn writing2012-01-20T15:04:44-08:00http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/writingtosurvive/~3/RWGN09bkG5I/tenacious_me.phphttp://www.writingtosurvive.com/files/tenacious_me.php#unique-entry-id-553

This post has been a two-day project. Don’t get too excited, though, at the word wonderland ahead. Whatever is trapped in my mind – and it is trapped, it’s smashing against the sides of my skull and heaving large objects here and there – is stuck. I’d let it out, but I can’t find the key. So I keep on trying to write it out, to construct an escape hatch, a tunnel, a trap door to freedom. I’ve used old prompts to push me forward, which has resulted in pages of words. They appear to connect, to match up, but I’m just not happy with the sentences or paragraphs. Either my take on the prompt is tiresome – do I really need to write about the last time I saw various people, especially when these people are essentially history? – or I have not yet found a way in or through or across the piece.

Everyone goes through times when writing feels impossible, but what is most frustrating about this spell is those trapped thoughts tugging at me, asking for a voice. I don’t feel empty. I feel frustrated. Sure, I could use the old schtick of breast beating and past resurrection. I could structure whatever it is that needs life into heavy metaphorical framework, thereby obscuring the poetry, the deeply felt quality of it.

Here are the elements: a dream in which I showed the boy how he could blot out the moon with his thumb, and an email from a friend discussing the flood of mutual feeling that emerged when she recently ran into a man who broke her heart decades ago (thanks, b.). The moon fakes a glow, it reflects the light of another; despite its fakery, the moon has power over the oceans, the pull over water and blood; blotting it with a finger is a fraud; our attempts to pretend that deep, inexplicable connection doesn’t exist are a form of cheating the self: moon/ trickster/ tides/ love/authenticity.

Maybe it’s as simple as that, a series of words. Maybe I’ve just been on a throat-clearing binge, need to write and write and write until I get to the point or until the point gets to me. It’s so easy to give up on this stuff, especially when the only compelling reason to keep going comes from within me. Nobody's paying me for this, or giving me a grade, and having the willpower to struggle through self-doubt, foolishness, and what appears to be my own incompetence is not one of my strong points.

The Round Robin starts up again on Sunday. I think I need to challenge myself to not go back to the old themes, to try and divert myself from familial dirges and soaking in the past. Those themes and approaches are too easy. The less sleep I get (my sleeping tends to suffer during the RR – I race to wake up and start writing as early as possible), the darker my writing becomes, too. I don’t necessarily want to avoid darkness, but I do want to avoid the incessantly inward glance. So I need to keep up with my sleep, to remind myself that I have the time.

Attempting to direct my writing may initially result in some pretty poorly written work. It’s unfamiliar territory and will be necessarily self-conscious at first. Or maybe it won’t. But I don’t want to give up on something just because I am not immediately competent. I have to give myself permission to be bad at it. I think that’s the key to a lot of new things for me – I need permission to do poorly, on the assumption that I will learn and improve (or stop after I've tried repeatedly without improvement). In other words, I can set myself up to work through self-doubt by being easier on myself, by allowing myself to fail. If I allow myself to fail and give myself room to learn (and to be unknowing), I can develop tenacity. Willpower.

Hmm. I feel that heart warmth, the faint burn of waiting tears, a recognition of the truth. Is this part of what is going on in my mind, the thoughts that will out? What the fuck do they have to do with the moon and love? Am I distracting myself with metaphorical baubles while the rest of me struggles with what it will take to change my writing (and anything else that needs a rethink)? Maybe.

Maybe it’s all very simple and I just haven’t been able to see it until now.

Image: Incredibooth photo of me, obscured by balls of artificial light.

Is the title a little cutesy? Once I thought of it, I couldn't resist.

]]>http://www.writingtosurvive.com/files/tenacious_me.php#unique-entry-id-553From there to herewritingtosurviveBlogs & bloggers2012-01-17T10:48:42-08:00http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/writingtosurvive/~3/OcXJUwyOa0Y/from_there_to_here.phphttp://www.writingtosurvive.com/files/from_there_to_here.php#unique-entry-id-552

I’ve been doing this blogging gig for over four years now, though the evidence from the early days is mainly gone. When I started, the boy was not quite two and a half years old and I was stuck and frustrated and full of stories and emotions that needed to be out in the world. I wanted to be a writer, but I never actually wrote anything. My desire had an “if only” quality to it, a yearning for a life that seemed out of my reach.

I started out writing anonymously, with the idea that I would probably write while locked up in the bathroom. It was the only room in which I could shut the door and have some semblance of privacy (most of the time), although that concept didn't last very long, thank goodness, and I am happy that I didn't name the blog the first thing that came to mind, The Bathroom Diaries.

In preparation for a February blogiversary post, I’ve been going through the old stuff, including a file of posts I deleted early on because of their extremely personal, current-at-the-time nature. In the very early days, I wrote candidly about my life. I could do this because nobody was reading and nobody knew who I was anyway. It’s interesting – and sometimes disconcerting – to see the roots of some of my current themes in my early writing, though I have also come a very long way.

For example, here’s something from December 27, 2007: Most of today was spent trying to fight the feeling of being in a mind-numbing life. It's a great psych-out, talking my brain out of its funk, trying to stay in the moment. Lots of internal pep talks. I am no longer totally mired in brain funk, but still struggle with boredom and my self-imposed exile. Four-plus years is way too long to feel that way, but at least things are changing.

Here’s what I wrote on January 16, 2008 on the idea behind writing to survive: Trust me, this is writing to survive. If I don't get it out of my mind via my fingers, I think I would do something really destructive. There is an element of self-censorship to what I write, but that's good. It gives it form and reason.

I’m not sure what I think about this now, as someone who has both been very open on the blog (perhaps too open, especially when it comes to writing about other people) and has also constructed metaphorical frameworks in order to control my emotions and threatening thoughts, posts that attempt to extinguish or at the very least contain my internal fires. Self-censorship is not the right word to describe how I form my version of reality here. Clearly I get something by being open about my feelings, open in this very public context as much as I able to be open, but maybe the rationale for that is an inability to be open elsewhere. And sometimes I obscure my intent with metaphor and walls of words, all written with a compulsion to get them out there, as if I was sending secret messages to an ideal reader.

That post goes on to say: As I was playing with H and C today (H=husband, C=the boy aka child), I reminded myself of how short these days are. C won't be little forever. He won't always want to be with me. He won't remember wanting to rub and kiss my belly. His sweet (albeit repetitive) play will change and he will move on and be an independent creature. He deserves a sense of his inherent worth, not a vague feeling of being inconvenient (oh, I hope I'm not passing that feeling on to him).

There is no danger of the boy forgetting the soothing properties of my belly – he still rubs and kisses it when he needs to be comforted. His play has gotten less repetitive, of course, and I still try to be in the moment with him as much as possible, to remind myself that his childhood is fleeting. And now that I have more personal space – it didn’t exist back then, between the staying at home and the kid who didn’t want to go anywhere and the extended breastfeeding and co-sleeping – I no longer worry about giving him the idea that he is inconvenient.

Over time, larger themes have emerged – guilt, forgiveness, desire, – my voice has become stronger, and my writing has shifted. Certain topics take on the quality of a wave, with the buildup, the crest and trough, sometimes building up again months later (for example, the stillbirth of my first son was a huge topic in late 2008 – early 2009, with intermittent, much less overwrought mentions after that, not that I've dropped it completely). I’m also having fun identifying my favorite posts which, surprisingly, are mainly fictional. For example, Berkeley type still makes me laugh and The Bottom of the Sea, part of the NaNoWriMo novel I wrote in 2009, shows what I can do when I really apply myself. In the process of identifying, of charting the progress of my mind and where I've gotten stuck, as well as seeing how I took something I wanted to do – write – and made it happen, I am better able to evaluate what works and what I must change before another four years slip into memory.

One thing that I can both agree and disagree with now, this sign-off from January 9, 2008: Too self-aware. Damn. And without any prospects. The prospects are out there, but I might need to tone down the self-awareness a bit. Too much can paralyze.

Image: The boy, spring 2008.

Finishing this up as the boy lies sick in the couch across the room, wondering if this post will be of interest to anyone but me. Well, at least I can show that change is possible, and that even without much external change there can be internal shifts. I credit writing and my determination to keep on doing it.

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