If I know what I’m writing about when I start, 800 words typically flow fluidly from my fingertips in a little over an hour. Yesterday I was nearly four hours in and still stalled at 696 words when I had to give up the topic for the day: one of those “letters you’re never going to send”.
Of course near the end of the process I noted that Bindu’s post for the day mentioned the virtue of letter writing as an exercise during the #215800 challenge. This has been a catharsis-evoking practice of mine for many years and it provides some of the juiciest, most genuine expression I’ve ever gotten out of myself. The inner censor gets distracted and wanders away, leaving me to pour forth the truth with something akin to wild abandon.
Yesterday’s struggle announced itself when I realized that I was actually going to send the thing.
Doing so will have (probably already is having) irrevocable repercussions. It will be the impetus for a round of inner work the magnitude of which I can scarcely fathom and which once started, I am obliged to ride to the finish.
Just thinking that that missive has been released into the world, I am breathless. Whether with exaltation or terror, it is hard to say.
What I do know is that as I got ready to leave the house yesterday I found I had to choose shoes that make me stand a little taller, hold myself with a little more strength, make me feel a little more centered. Then I proceeded to blast my psyche with the music of bold, strong, battle-torn women ranging from Nina Simone to Johnatha Brooke, with a sufi qawwali thrown in for good measure. And at the end of the day, well past midnight and fairly racked with exhaustion and apprehension (“oh, what have I done?”), I came across the letter to which Bindu had linked on her post for the day. Thus I discovered the Martha Wainright song the author had used as a soundtrack while writing, and ended the long night in gasping sobs.
Ah, and so it begins. Or rather, continues...
To say that this challenge has been significant is to leave out far too much of the equation.
It’s given me control over a portion of my day that I never thought to claim as my own before.
It’s opened portals of perception previously clogged due to inattention. Life is resplendent with detail and nuance again.
This challenge has created a community out of strangers, some of whom I can nearly guarantee would not have come together in any more conventional way - creating an intimate bond that nonetheless is also somehow anonymous and therefore safe for everyone.
The greatest gift of all, though, is that it’s made me confront myself in a way that is as utterly terrifying as it is exhilarating. It’s put things in motion that I’d been comfortably avoiding for eons; it’s compelled me to give myself homework of the highest order- and to turn in the assignment every day, no matter what.
I said in an earlier post that I wish to earn the trust of the old woman I hope to become. Trust is a long time coming with me (and apparently with her too), but I’m beginning to feel that I’ve got her approval. I feel her silent support as if she were my ancestor rather than the future me.
There is no question that years from now I will point to June 2010 as a pivotal, even defining moment in my life. This is the time I learned to take up the space I need to thrive, and to revel in the sense of strength singing through my sinews when I stretch my self (literally and literarily).
This is the time I’ll remember developing the tenacity to engage in the struggles necessary to be free from the past (to grow despite the knots)- when disruption, trepidation, and even abject terror were no longer good enough excuses for keeping the monsters safe in their pens, fed and watered with my own limiting fears.
This is the time I’ll remember walking out into the world as if wearing a slightly different skin- one that fits better, feels more comfortable, in some important way more “me” than I’ve ever been before...
Of course I am still replete with insecurities, uncertainties, and vulnerabilities. I’m sure they’ll continue to baffle, confuse, and confound me with the very human aspect of every endeavor. But what has happened in these two weeks is that I’ve come to look at these elements of my being as tools rather than liabilities. They are a jumping-off place, the impetus for engaging in the work that moves me forward - out of the past and into a frank, authentic, and engaging future.
I am gratefully indebted to you all.
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