Writing has always been a beautiful outlet for me. I have been known to stitch together a sentence quicker than a Singer sewing machine and perhaps include enough emotion to make someone laugh out loud or let a single tear teeter totter before rolling over an eyelid and down a reader's face. Writing comes easily and freely most days. And then there are occasions, like since January, where my thoughts stutter step like a Parkinson's patient's gait. But when I scrape away the adjectives, when I peel away the emotions, when I begin to take a long, hard look at my blank space, one word pops in over and over again: fear.
I have a history of writing. When I was in Fifth Grade, I was published in the Scholastic Newsletter for a brain teaser I had sent in with no hopes of a reply. But the next month, when I arrived at school, Mrs. Taylor had taped the newsletter to the haphazardly erased chalkboard. I had been published. The surge through my body was fast and strong, like an unexpected ocean wave that tumbles you into the hard sand. You come up sputtering, but you cannot wait for the next challenge, the next rush, the next time when you dive through the wave and come up on the other side of the foam.
I became a writer for our Middle School newspaper. A short mystery story was published. Again, I was overcome with this emotion of adulation. I liked it. I liked it a lot. My writing was being noticed by my Language Arts teachers and I remember reading if you want to become a great writer, you first needed to become a voracious reader. My cousin in Massachusetts became my pen pal and librarian as we shuffled silly letters and cannot-put-down books through the postal service. I was soaking up everything.
High school arrived. I think I was the only one in my class who loved Shakespeare and The Old Man and the Sea. I thought The Odyssey was brilliant. Greek Tragedies seemed familiar, I could not get enough of Mary Queen of Scots, the Diary of Anne Frank became a hallmark of my emotional self and when I devoured The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I knew I was a Southerner at heart and would someday, stand in the stank, dark mud of the Mississippi River. At the same time, I longed to be Harriet Tubman, Hester Prynne, Jo March or any other woman who broke conventional rules. I understood the complexities of Dorian Gray and how his character was very much alive in my 1980-something high school life. I shivered when reading Edgar Allen Poe but yearned to learn more about his dark side. He was the ultimate Bad Boy. I hung on my English teachers' every word without ever showing interest - until I had to summarize a novel and then my cover was blown as they spoke the words in class I had scribbled the night before between scrimmages or a game. I signed up for Journalism my senior year. My Editor-in-Chief liked my stories, my peers liked my stories but my subject usually did not. Kerosene on a burning fire.
Fast forward to East Carolina University in Greenville, NC where I did a stint as a college reporter and garnered a few headlines and a few calls from the administration. Again, the bull rush of me beginning to understand words can have an impact on the social core when truthfully written. And here began my disassociation from journalism. I was a conservative in a liberal world and my literal voice was upsetting my professors. Yet, they still had to give me a passing grade because although they did not agree with my ideals, my essays were coaxing them to think in a different light that was uncomfortable and against the grain for their way of thinking. And here, at this point, because of my personal insecurities and my need for financial security after putting myself through college, I surrendered and gave up the one true thing that made me happy. Fear's tentacles were tightly wrapping themselves around me. I surrendered my craft and settled on a paycheck. And the next twenty years I began searching for a happy ending that would never be written. Because I chose not to follow God's purpose, I was completely, hopelessly adrift in a sea of chance professions and child rearing. Yet, eventually, I would end up back in the harbor where I felt safe and secure writing an off again, on again blog. And people would tell me I was a good writer - I should do more. Yet I was still too scared to throw over the anchor and plunge into the literary world. The voice inside my head, reeking of fear, once again, told me I was not good enough. And once again, I fell to my knees and succumbed to a safe choice.
If you read my blog, you know, my brother-in-law passed away unexpectedly during the holidays. Somehow, he has been a catalyst for a lot of people the past few months. I know people who have lost weight. I know people who have started exercising. I know people who have quit their jobs because of the stress and had the means to reassess their life. And then there is me. I have sat for the last three months and thought about my brother-in-law and sister-in-law who had read my blog about Sadie and asked point blank, "Why are you not doing something with this?". They asked me this question one year ago. I sit at this moment, typing these black keys with white etching and looking at a screen that is blurry with my own tears waiting to jump over my eyelids. And the honest answer is, "I am scared.". But I have watched my strong sister-in-law and my amazing nieces the past three months and I have to pony up. I have to take the chance of putting myself out there in an uncomfortable place with my words and my imagination. Because I need to let go of an image in my head and connect with the passion in my heart - the gift I was given by God. I need to write. It does not matter if my words do not get published. It does not matter if my words end up in a book that is dog-eared and underlined by a student trying to convey his/her thoughts to an English professor. It does not matter if I end up on the New York Times Bestseller list, if I garner an agent, if I fall along the lines of Gone With the Wind or The Help and end up with screen credits. What matters is I stayed true to my heart, took a chance and sent my fear to time out. I need to listen to my inner voice, follow my joy and understand that the outcome may not be a fairy tale, but that for me, the writing, my writing, is my happily ever after. And who does not want to end up in their happy place?
Paul, after all this time, your voice is still loud in my head, pushing me to places I do not want to go. But I love you for that, brother, even when I cursed you for doing the same on Earth, albeit silently. The women you held to so tightly in your life are now shoving me down the river of my life with no life jacket, no life boat, and no excuses. I see them move forward every day, lassoing the unknown and putting fear out to pasture, saddling into a new life they never saw coming. I need to write. Honestly. I need to write. You joyfully, heartbreakingly, reminded me, I need to write. And so I shall. And if ever I write that novel that I know God has placed in my heart, I will dedicate it to you. And now readers, many or few, I am asking you to hold me to this task. Joyfully. Respectfully. Honestly. Because sometimes The End is just The Beginning.
