You don't really know me; do you?

So, I'm writing this book.

"Oh, what are you writing about?" they ask excitedly.

There was a time, not too long ago, when I doubted that I was capable of writing a book that anyone would ever want to read.  I've been wanting to chronicle my childhood experience for at least the last ten years, seriously.  Just last year, I started telling people that I am actually trying to write a book, and, OH how often I regret it!

Now added to the seemingly impossible uphill climb of describing, in painful detail, all the painful details of my childhood, I have "helpful" acquaintances. They smile at me and then speak of what they do not know

"You just have to do it." they'll declare after soliciting a thirty second life summary. Ha! I imagine these people would be living out their lives in padded cells if they had experienced my teenage years.  I also think they might be right, but, after years of avoidance, addiction, failure, and painful processing of my own emotional landscape, I realize it's just not that simple.

"Have you written ANYTHING?" they query, like I'm a sad little child whose only missing piece is a friendly challenge to my self-worth, and they're right, but only if their goal was to make me want to kill myself and be done with writing once and for all.  I don't think I'm ever going to kill myself, but I had to fight to get to this point through a lot of supposedly well-meaning but terribly invalidating people.  How could they know?

My dad discouraged most of my creative endeavors, especially writing.  In the early weeks of my freshman year of high school, I walked into my room and discovered him reading the three or so pages of "free-writing" I had been working on privately for English class.  Of course he beat me.  Showing my journal to my teacher carried the obvious potential for psychological analysis and a possibility that the police might get information out of me which could land him back in prison.  He needed to beat me, because I had been so careless as to put him at risk. I don't remember the details of the beating, but I probably had to take a few days off from school until my bruises healed.  This might be a good story for a book.

So, now that you feel sorry for me and know to never say anything to me about my writing, I would like to admit that writing "anything" has become a useful tool for me.  Sometimes, I need to tell myself to "just write."  Apparently, advice is not all bad.  I'll still get angry if you make it sound like my next step should be clear. I'm worn out from fighting demons, and I'm not above taking out my frustrations on total strangers.  I'm sorry.  Should you tell me what to do, I'll probably tell you where to go, but, on the other hand, I am listening.  Sometimes, the advice and the stupid sounding questions are actually helpful.  Help me if you dare!

© Copyright Ernest Samuel Christie III 2013