Tags
anxiety, autobiography, domestic violence, essays, gaslighting, should, to publish or not to publish, un-silencing, writing anxiety
https://instagram.com/p/1vph1hm_Jo/?taken-by=shapeshifter43
I’ve written the thing, the story, the truth, that I’ve been trying to write for a year now, and I want to both print it out poster-sized-and-laminated for all to see, and bury it on a flash drive in my backyard.
I sort of hate the word “should.”
“You should totally share your story, it will help people,” said one friend.
“Don’t you think you should wait a little while, get some distance/perspective/healing first?” asked another.
“You should think about your children, how will it affect them if you make this public knowledge?” A random said to another random on the Internet, about this very issue.
We should (grrr) really stop shoulding each other and just do what we need to do.
I try not to tell those who have been traumatized that they SHOULD share or not share. And call me crazy, but that whole distance/perspective thing isn’t going to change one single fact about the night […]. If anything, my memory will fade. If anything, if I EVER want to get this story down, it should be now.
I truly appreciate the friend who said my story might help people. I think of all the stories, poems, essays, and blog posts I’ve read by survivors of domestic violence and rape, and how much they’ve helped me—to feel less alone, to feel validated after years of gaslighting, to feel empowered to write my own reality, and to feel like, if I share that reality, maybe at least a few people will have my back. It’s like giving a poetry reading and seeing a couple friendly faces in the audience before you even open your mouth.
I asked for readers for this essay on Facebook, and five people volunteered. I experienced serious anxiety sending this thing to a tiny sample audience; how will I ever publish it, if it’s accepted somewhere? I guess I can worry about that part later. The important thing is the writing, documenting, processing. The insisting that I didn’t dream it. That I lived through it.
How do survivors do this?
Same way we survived, I guess. Somehow.
What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever written, or your most difficult experience sharing a piece of autobiographical writing?
another writing mom 
“…the adult who has been victimized has many more tools at her disposal in seeking justice and her abuser knows it, and the she knows that he knows it, and then she spirals off into the endlessness of what she can and can’t, should and shouldn’t say…” This is the exact loop of the anxiety. Precisely. Fuck. My abuser would say everything I say about the abuse is 1) either an exaggeration or an outright lie that is 2) designed to take him down, get revenge. Bc an abuser will never think of his/her victim as a PERSON who deserves to speak, to have that release, to receive support. It actually has nothing to do with you, dude, and everything to do with me and my ability to continue existing. If that’s the decision to be made–do I stay in a silence that will not protect me, or do I speak, unburden, warn, and accept love–then I’ve already made it. It’s not if or why, it’s how and when.
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I will so read that book. I could talk about this all day, I think. Maybe we’re writing the same thing, the same story, in multiple ways, for multiple purposes. Maybe we show the work now (activist art?) and make it beautiful later? Maybe these stories are going to push themselves to the front of our consciousness(es) for the rest of our lives, in some form or another? (PS, I have written fiction and published fiction about abuse. While still in the relationship. It has to come out somehow, somewhere, some time…)
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I could talk about it all day, too. It’s like acquiring language all over again, for me: I exist. This is what I sound like.
I’m thinking now about the idea you opened your post with — the “should”-ing — and the role that it plays in the arts, all the craft talks & seminars in grad school that were all about how “we” do x y or z. As I learned in counselling this week, my decisions are right because they are mine — revelation! But then, again, back where we started: my subject & aesthetic may be my decision, but art doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
I do think that many of us are telling our one story over & over again in some way. My adult story of being exploited & gaslighted is just another version of the story of being neglected as a child. Which is why I started writing in the first place. But the adult who has been victimized has many more tools at her disposal in seeking justice and her abuser knows it, and the she knows that he knows it, and then she spirals off into the endlessness of what she can and can’t, should and shouldn’t say. For me, the only way out is to make a decision, and it will always be the right decision if it’s truly mine.
lol I feel like swearing loudly now. This is cathartic 🙂
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I feel you, 100% — though I think your stress is compounded by having a little person whose welfare figures into your decisions as well. I wrote The Essay I Needed to Write last spring and sent it out to a small group of readers with whom I’d been exchanging work. Half of them ignored it entirely. The other half sent me overwhelmingly positive backchannel support: they got it, they’d been through similar, they drew strength from my having written it. I ended up sending it out to some magazines, then lasted about a week before collapsing in a heap of lawsuit anxiety & withdrew it everywhere, which made me feel like a failure as a writer, like a victim all over again.
A year later, I’m glad that I pulled it — I knew, then, it wasn’t my best work, though it was perhaps my most important work. For me, time has helped, as it’s allowed me to separate the tangled threads of self-respect and hunger for revenge, justice & retribution. I’m finding other ways to talk about my own story that I have no fear of making public. It’s resulted in my thinking a lot about the nature of art, what I think it can do, what I want my own to do, and that’s been as much a part of healing for me as anything — an intellectual & emotional agency that no one can touch, that’s helped to restore my sense of self. Like you say: “it’s the writing, documenting, processing” that you’ve got to go through, for your self. I think artists tend to prey on themselves a little too quickly, to sacrifice themselves to the work, even in subtle or invisible ways. Do it for you, first, then do it for art.
You will figure it out, I know you will. You’ll know for sure when it’s ready for the rest of the world. Keep the faith.
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OMG all of this, Vanessa. Thank you. I think what’s really tearing me up inside is that I believe in the power of going through things publicly. The messiness of it, the realness, and if haters gonna hate, then the unapologetic “what, you have zero shit you’re going through? How nice for you” flip-off. When other writers do this, it’s empowering and comforting at the same time (for me). I want to to hug them and send them cupcakes. But it’s hard to be that person doing the writing. Duh. I want to be. Yes, “the writing, documenting, processing,” but also, The Process. The flux of the reality that is to become the art. Like showing your work in math. Maybe I should’ve just been a stripper? 😛 I appreciate you sharing about your own difficult process. Strength and safety and love to you!
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Yeah, the immediacy seems so important, as if art were always live performance. Showing your work in math = nearly as anxiety-provoking 🙂 Have you ever read Joyce Maynard’s At Home In the World? It’s the story of her “relationship with” (read: victimization by) J.D. Salinger. It’s what got me to finally write about my own abuse; because of the nature of that relationship, its power dynamic, the book really spoke to me: I saw so much of myself in it that I finally understood I was not alone / crazy / stupid. But I have absolutely no desire to read that book again — it didn’t transport me out of the mess, affirm the life outside of it. It’s the book that shows the work. So, critical that it exists? Ab-so-fucking-lutely. But, for whatever reason, not the kind of book I want to write. Thank God SHE wanted to. (It was not, as you’d expect, kindly received by the Salinger minions, i.e. Every White Dude.)
So I guess a question we both might consider: where does the show-the-work mindset come from? And, in aesthetic terms, are there various strategies for doing that? Is it always in autobiography? For the gaslighted, I think it’s impossible to skip that step, in one form or another, because so much of the labour is recovering from your dismantled reality. Showing the work is putting it back together. Man, I’m writing myself into a poem now — thanks 🙂 And love, safety, strength!
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So far my most difficult experience was having this poem workshopped while my mom was in the room. It’s a positive poem so that made it about .0000000000000000000000001% easier. I wasn’t so much worried about myself as I was about embarrassing her. I let her read, and say if it could be workshopped before doing so.
http://www.fruitapulp.com/2015/05/05/a-poem-for-my-mom-by-jason-bradford/
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Wonderful poem, Jason! Thank you so much for sharing. I imagine workshopping this poem with your mom present was incredibly difficult, no matter how positive the poem is. For anyone who would like to read more of Jason’s work, check out his chapbook The Inhabitants. I reviewed it for Blood Lotus a while back. The link to purchase the chapbook is within the first few paragraphs.
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So much yes. All that we “should” do is what each of us needs to heal + give each other the space to assert that agency.
You ask how you do this and I think it’s because you were meant not just to survive but to thrive, and I wish nothing less for you.
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Thank you, Sarah. I wish the same for you. Your words perhaps more than anyone else’s have helped me tremendously in the past year. To thriving. 🙂
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Although I have no personal experience, my very close friend experienced multiple abusers and multiple abuses ( physical, sexual) as a child and was actually abducted and held underground for 17 days. Show recently wrote a book “Buried Memories”. She is very active in speaking about recovery. I believe anyone that shares a story of survival of any abuse/trama can serve as an inspiration.
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Thanks, Jamie! I’m going to look up your friend’s book right now. 🙂
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