The Distance and the Intimacy: The Love Affair with Writing

We're all consumers before we are creators, no matter how much our parents/caregivers might have insisted the massive dumps in our diapers were a sight to behold. Learning faces through the blur of first sight, hearing every strange noise to prickle the ear-- assuming we're born with all senses intact, that is. (Perhaps this is why some deprivation of sense is fascinating to me, but I'll get to that.)

What do I mean by distance and intimacy? Well, not all of us really know that our 'passions' have longevity so there's a time issue involved. Sometimes, and for long periods of time, we may break up with our passions, cheat on them, all the while pining for them. Sometimes a particularly sensitive piece creates a different phenomenon of distance/intimacy. Sometimes we need to blubber and roll in the juices and sometimes we need to be the harsh logical judge of it. We get through the passion parts and then poke, edit, play, indulge, reject, accept-- it's 12 stages of grief and euphoria, but we each fill in the blanks. I've said before-- ebb and flow and some of the best writing I've seen uses the push and pull of development, to align with the very real state of many struggles. Something the characters move on their motivations, sometimes things have to happen to them. Do we take the omniscient look and hash it out in great detail or do we limit it to experience the spotty details alongside the character? Neither one is king when it comes to depth. From any perspective, we can get uncomfortably close or coldly analytical.

There are a lot of aspects to me, for one, that people try to explain. It's especially trendy these days to assume to speak for others, even when the subject is more than capable. I suppose you could narrow down my attitudes to trauma, whether it be my sexuality, my draw towards art and writing, my lifestyle. You could correlate things simply, but there's more to that history than I will ever feel comfortable writing or explaining, especially when it pertains to the 'stressors' outside of myself, the people that did and still can terrorize me if I step over the line. I will not give them that piece of fame, to ride on whatever failures or successes I have in my life with association. If you have bogeymen in your life, give them to your fictions. A memoir is the thing to write if you outlive them all.

That being said, there are 'other' things. Things I stopped trying to understand, things I use and learn to master as much as possible and I don't aim to be mysterious with those so I'll describe this the best I can without using labels that might give you false impressions.

I've struggled with neuropathic issues from a very early age. For no apparent reason or stressor, I've temporary lost my sight or hearing or sense of touch, or had them 'heightened' to unbearable and painful levels. No amount of searching ever gave me answers and in most cases, I was too afraid to tell. I had some wonderful teachers along the way that saw me melting down in my confusion and helped me, no questions, no words. Sometimes it was just a space to cry in their office, sometimes it was me interrupting to go to the bathroom. The counselor, for some reason, really liked me, even gave me her home phone number and told me to call if I needed it, made sure all my teachers knew that I could leave class any time I needed to (on days I bothered to show up, I didn't leave class at all-- kind of an all-or-nothing when it comes to showing up). It's not that these people thought I was suicidal, but looking back, I think they knew my 'other' better than books or doctors had any grasp of back then. They also saw my potential. Another thing I couldn't see without hindsight, but learned to trust some people when they said good things about me.

Because I don't see what's in front of me or, rather, rarely do. I see things more clearly looking back, sometimes beating myself up for how stupid or ineffective I was in the moment. I became adept at trying to recreate the person I wanted to be, to try to learn to be a person that can see the moment or even a little ahead, learn to anticipate the world around me. Somewhere in the invention of myself, I became a storyteller. I never saw a place for THAT (I never could get the taste for lying) in my life, but there was a pocket I'd stumbled on where worlds did wait. Despite all the characters and events happening over 'there', it could still be a lonely place, not a place of inside jokes and the things I could talk about with others who weren't familiar. So I wanted to find ways to show people. I was already building those places, learning to express through art and writing what I struggled to say.

An honest place, one I have trouble lying about too. It's not a place that can actually speak for my desires, doubts or fears, just a gathering ground from my journey in this world. And I don't have these fascinating stories of world travel, but I can simulate it through the means that I have. It's maddening, a bloom of chaos and beauty. It can be safe and warm or frigid and frightening. It affects moods that people can't see the reason for, and sometimes I don't even know why I feel or act the way I do. It can be a real bastard trying to recreate it for the sharing. Yeah, sometimes I thought about giving up because creation and using it to funnel what I don't really understand is never a safe place. It's erratic and it's not structured. Because of that, writing...

Writing holds structure or none at all. The only demand is what you intend for it. I wrote stories for school, but then I wrote stories in school when I was supposed to be doing something else. Just little stories. 'Born to Play Video Games' and 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Kitties'... (I loved the Turtles, but the idea of drawing humanoid cats was just so appealing.) I wrote poems when I fell in love with rhythm and rhyme. It was music and color in words alone. Alongside this passion, always came the impulse and whimsy of 'doodling'. I love that word too, doodling. So often it was said to me in an attempt to belittle it or guilt me for wasting time, but doodling and noodling about-- those things brought me closer to a feeling of rightness. Doodling has brought me closer to some of the most amazing people in my life-- my best friends, family, and my friend's children especially. No matter how much adulting pressures my drawing to be 'more', kids always give me this surreal sense of expertise I forget to see sometimes. They're not comparing me to 'masters' or ticking off all they've liked better; they're capable of just loving it for what it is. (Not unique to kids, by the way-- my best friends always seem to lift me up like this too. Also people who are terrible at lying, but are also likely to clam up if they don't want to hurt my feelings either.)

It's hard to say whether I can make my characters and worlds resonate the same way they do with me. I'm not someone who can see the hook, the blurb, the simplification of the big picture. My love affair with writing and creating is selfish but it wants to be generous. It can feel superficial, it can feel overly deep. Courageous and cowardly. I can't lie, but sometimes I can omit or gloss over, defense mechanisms for survival and a habit I try to break.

I write because... it's too big to contain. Because otherwise it can leak out where I don't want it to. Just like my neuropathic struggles, it's not about the cure, but working with the intuitive treatment of it. Writing is often a sensitive organism, sometimes needing compassion, sometimes needing tough love. Raising kids-- much the same. You treat every kid the same and they lose sight of what could motivate them to improve or change. I don't discipline my nephews the same, nor reward them the same and when they notice this, I explain the circumstances, let them see the logic (the punishment fits the crime and so on). Almost always, a punishment or a reward merits a discussion, but there is also a lot of time for play, contemplation, or things being what they will be. I never wanted to be a parent, but like most labels, it's not important. These little guys grew on me and the one thing I want to give them are tools to maneuver through an unfair, unsympathetic, confusing world.

I write because it's not an exaggeration to say they saved me. I call them my little heroes. I knew it would never be fair for a human being to inherit my issues, but I did need 'new life' to remind me of the one the world tried to beat out of me. I did find myself and it wasn't just through me. It was all the things they helped me see-- family/friends, writing, drawing, music. I didn't need to 'have kids' to learn to look ahead. I just needed to open myself to the 'other' things.