The Glass Left Behind

I vaguely remember the time I first saw writing referred to as bleeding on paper. I'm fairly sure my swollen bleeding brain was drawn to the possibility of giving the excess blood somewhere to go, even if that's probably not what most people seem to think it means (going by the context around it). When people say it, it always sounds as if they are just using a more violent means of 'going for the gusto'. It sounds like a risk you take when you've already given blood or you're anemic, that you're giving something that may be more than you were initially willing to, perhaps. I do know that the concept didn't make me uncomfortable, but I was certainly on edge. It's not giving my blood that scares me; it's drawing the sharks that want more. Very likely why some writers hoard their precious red gold.

Let's skip context for a second and start by saying that it's very difficult to explain emotional abuse to someone who has no experience with it. Even harder to explain to many people that blood doesn't make you immune and some of the worst offenders can be family (and largely because many societies cannot even perceive of disloyal family or that they could even do anything unforgivable-- this give the offenders a dangerous blind spot to exploit). I've seen some books do it well enough, able to plant sufficient terror and unease into the 'beloved' villain that torments the protagonist. To show what it's like to be the hostage when other people see only the luxury of your life. To have people judge you as ungrateful, jealous, lazy, even childish when you're being overwhelmed by someone who becomes more likable the more they tear you down, like their charisma is fed with your destruction.

To survive, I suppressed a lot of both the strengths and weaknesses of those experiences. I've tapped into the surface of those incidents to write in the past, but it's been a trying week to dig them out in preparation for the third book of my series (yes, UnSung is about 5/6 done, but since each book leads into the next, I have to make the lead-ins more fluid). I'm giving one of the characters more of my blood than I've ever allowed before. There are some differences between her and I, but if we sat down together and talked about family and friends, we'd have a great deal in common. Do I kill her or give her some story of triumph? Part of the reason I'm not making her 'me' like some writers do is that I don't want that to be a certainty, an emotional parallel that determines the story. I don't want to make her a Mary Sue or paint her as some kind of victim. Her importance is still a bit of a mystery to me.

Even though I'm dancing around it, the bleeding in the brain is the central theme. My brain as a youth, and my heart besides, was something I left to open air to absorb everything. I liked running around barefoot too, just to strengthen the idea. I never really saw a need for filtering, in a time before trauma could issue the need for caution. Perhaps why most bravado comes off as the trait of someone who bluffs or hasn't been tested yet and rarely through actual triumph under fire. But, experience; I could pick out what I liked and throw the rest back, right? It would be nice if a contaminated brain could just get tossed out and replaced, but instead, it's more like a wineglass shattering next to it and try as you might, you just can't pick out all the pieces. No matter how whole and neat you thought your mind, the broken things find all the imperfections. You settle it back in place, tilt your head to test it and everything seems like new. You probably pat your back, puff up with pride and start to swagger into the day.

The pain is blinding. Your eye twitches, an impossibly fast shadow just out of focus. Your foot turns and you hold your breath, relieved that you don't wrench your ankle at least. A lingering sense of vertigo remains and you shoot a quick sidelong glance, your ego recovering enough to hope no one saw what looked like forgetting how to walk.

You tilt your head like you did the time before, only this time, it's cautious. Before you can meet the same vigor of your first test, the splitting pain strikes again. Damn. You're out now; you can't just go home, root around for the glass again. So you get through the day, recovering from every stab with a sudden smile, every stumble with a silly dance, every whimper with a tuneless hum.

When you can finally get around to it, it's gone too deep. You can't be sure if it had already been too far even before you felt it or not, but you tell yourself that you should have looked harder, been more careful. You frantically look for it anyway, only now it's not just glass, but the dirt under your fingernails, the errant hairs floating around, the dust, the icky sticky bugs...

It's bad enough when you have only yourself to blame. Sometimes your glass was put in by a surgeon and it will take a surgeon to get it back out. Yet you swear you know yourself better than anyone and don't want just anyone rooting around in there.

People suffer in silence for reasons that outnumber the sands on this earth. The problem with something getting in is that it has little to do with a fault of strength. We get sick when we need to eat but sometimes we miss the signs that the food was prepared wrong. We get sick when the invisible germs travel by air when we take a breath or nibble on a nail that touched the contaminated door handle. Sometimes we'd rather show up to work barely able to stand rather than admit we aren't invulnerable. Some fault is seen in our life choices, how we take care of ourselves and we are never allowed to blame anyone because all fault is supposed to begin and end with us. There's often more to lose than gain and it's easier to pretend things are handled.

Sometimes we are only so sick because we just tell ourselves it's glorious to be broken. No life is without struggle, but perhaps it is only so bad because the generic band-aids that are in fashion are only making it worse.

People might think our smiles and show of strength and optimism are signs that we're onto some secret of happiness that they covet. There's almost a societally acceptable amount of misery that must be worn to be invisible to this scrutiny or at least not attract the psychopaths that can't tell the difference (or don't care even if they can).

As you can see (or have even done before), it's not difficult to find the analogies, the physical reactions and defenses behind the psychology but it's a very different beast to dissect the psychology, form the characters and the subtlety of the situations. Experience is still limiting since, like my abusers, they were very much counting on the trauma to make it difficult or even impossible for me to find aid or peace. Even parts of my childhood have been eaten away. Your brain sometimes takes more than it needs to, just in case.

I want this for my story though. I can't bear the thought of what hell a memoir would open so I don't even entertain it as non-fiction. What this woman goes through, I won't even dare to assign the same offenders by relation to her lest the comparison be damning, but I'll Frankenstein my experience into this theme because if I don't, I'll make it too sterile and safe. If this is what they mean by bleed, it comes mixed with pain and relief but also the apprehension that I'll have to let it go before it festers. Which means if I write it, I'll be itching to publish it just as much.

But hasn't that always been the case?

I've said many times before, but there is no need to assume all writers are only coming from a place of damage and depression and torment. Sure, for many of us, it's a fact of life, but one thing that is certain is that that mindset is useless to me when I work. Yes, useless. This is inherently why I go through a vulnerable planning phase, to take notes and tap into the messy parts then fortify myself to be the observer to work, to dive back in with the experience, the plan and the narration ready to make sense. I did this as a musician and I do it as an artist. How well do you think I can play flute when the music sneaks up on me and makes me sob? How well do you think I can draw when I'm trembling with emotion? Those things are a complete nuisance to the actual process so finding the mastery to interpret them will never work when I'm in the mindset to work and end up blubbering on my keyboard (the silicone cover on my keyboard is for possible coffee spillage, not my tears).

I know that many people are emotional writers. It's not that I'm not at all, but I can't say that I actually keep the resulting mess of that. It's just not where my stories work.

If only to defend my method, I can't tell you how many times people are surprised when they find out authors like JK Rowling and Sherilynn Kenyon started their famous books in the thick of depression. It doesn't really show, does it? They weren't looking to be locked in that stagnation but to turn magic on it. How many comedians turn their pain into laughter? This obsession with the idea that creatives are locked into this tunnel of only focusing on their real problems is just myopic.

In a sense, you could romanticize their shards of glass as prisms of transcendent light. Can't say I haven't tried to look at it that way. However, I think the glass still cuts sometimes. Life is what we do with the pain.

... Scratch all that. I think I've found my newest writing method.