Last week I got myself awfully worked up. I made a mistake, and then I cried messily, and then I wrote about it.
In between bouts of wailing in the car over my blown opportunity and the frustrating randomness of stupid mistakes and “what am I doing with my life?”, I crafted this post on the way home. And it was the only thing that made me feel better.
Though perhaps Facebook statuses are not the most advanced art form, I consider myself gifted at pulling off the pith. I was particularly proud of this status: highlight a common reaction, make fun of myself for rationalizing, make fun of myself for plunging into angst when I realize I’m rationalizing, make fun of myself for being yanked from angst by something as mundane as a parking space.
There was now a story to my emotional afternoon. I had successfully communicated it, and it entertained people. My tears were redeemed.
When I look back over the hardest things I have had to endure, I see that writing about them was the only thing that made them bearable.
Though I’m in love with emotion, even with dark, troubling emotions, it’s not until I describe these that I can rest with them. Sometimes this resolution is because the words have made the emotions concrete, or because the emotions are made part of a narrative. On my best days, in my best writing, it is because they are made beautiful.
This is what the words do: tie together afternoons of ups and downs, fit growth and discovery into narratives of every day, change pain into beauty, mediate God’s voice, make tears worthwhile.
When I drag a smooth pen over white paper and fill the pad with scribbles, the brightness explodes and illuminates darkness. I learn, and I change. I take hurts and use them for my own purposes.
This is what the words do.
What a beautiful piece. You have perceived and reflected the minds and emotions of all writers… so concisely and beautifully. I believe I will share this with my therapist, who has viewed my numerous poems about my grief recovery process as “romanticizing” my anguish. I have written little since that remark, but you are SO on-target, Margaret (pun?) that I know now that I shall write some more. Thank you for reminding me how therapeutic words on paper can be.
Please, please keep writing! (and consider finding a new therapist?)
I will. And you too !! Thank you again.
I don’t know you, frank, but yes!!
And meg, write on. Thank you.
You too, Jeannie.
Maybe you could expand on these fine thoughts and perhaps write a book about some of your struggles and triumphs? 😉
Joe
Maybe I will!
This is one of the first things I’ve read this morning, and I know I won’t read a wiser thing all day. You are so perceptive, Margaret. Those of us who write are indeed compelled to give shape and lasting substance to the random events, impulses and observations that confront us, just as a baker picks up the ingredients before her and transforms them into something new, nourishing and perhaps delicious. Thank you.
What an apt image, Karen. Thank you.
Margaret,
I think the process where one takes thoughts out of their mind and place them on paper helps one to work through the fog of their thoughts and emotions and get to a point where they have some clarity of what they really feel and think about something. It soothes the soul I think when one takes the chaos that is swirling all around in their head and put the pieces of the puzzle down on paper and as one does so I think we are able to see how things fit together for us. Writing also helps us organize our thoughts in such a way we can communicate those complex ideas and feelings better. I think for some people just talking things out has the same effect depending on the person. Writing has the extra benefit that we can reread it and refine it over time.
I seem to have lost your felice mi fa site or is this it?
Great observations on writing-as-organization. I like to believe that I organize things in my head before I write them down, but the truth is that the act of writing is often what puts them into place. And yes, Felice Mi Fa has migrated over here. Thanks for following me to the new site!
I am right there with you. Sometimes, I don’t even know WHAT I am thinking or feeling until I write about it. And I am also fond of Facebook statuses. I enjoy crafting them just as I enjoy writing a good blog post or a poem or a whole novel. Words are fun.