Ramblings on the Writing Process

It has been hard for me to get back into writing after I wrote my last post. I feel like my writing was sub-par. All over the place. Incoherent. Timeline unclear, jagged, going backward and forward with awkwardly long, frantic sentences. And the content itself was a bit...jarring. Overwhelming. Sickening. I couldn't find the wherewithal to keep going.

I've noticed that my writing wavers like a stick on an old-fashioned metronome, ticking back and forth between writing for catharsis and change -- and writing just to write. On the former side, my writing suffers with my own suffering: I'm charged with emotional recall; I don't care how the words fall off my fingertips and slap themselves onto the screen, just as long as they get out of me and onto it. On the other side, however, I couldn't "care" less "about" "what" I'm writing, so long as I'm writing -- but, even more importantly, writing well. Once in a long while, the ticker slows to stop for a moment, and I, suddenly aware, am suspended, poised in the middle between "meaning" and its signposts, between "content" and the characters that I'm using to represent it. Here is where I hope to find my writing identity.

The purpose of my blog is two-fold, and I find it difficult to stay in balance. One, I'm blogging things (or facts, events) that have "happened" in my life - focusing most intently on the past two years - as a means to prevent things similar from occurring. These things are ones that make me go "Ugh". But I'd much rather the things make me go "Ugh" than the writing itself (writing itself being the second half of the purpose of this blog, of course). My last post stopped my writing process in its tracks, because, that time, both the content and its form offended me terribly. I didn't like what I wrote or how I wrote it.

Here is a brief summary of my blog's "content", or the "what" of it: After watching my relationship with my husband crumble to the ground after ten years of steady erosion and a final heave-ho, I sifted through boyfriends, one-night stands...and before I knew it, was buried under a heaping, stinking pile of men. I enlisted myself in a program for "sex and 'love' addicts", thinking that my problem may be my "powerlessness" (i.e., my seeming inability to say "no" to any man who expresses any interest in me whatsoever). The founder of this program suggests, in his book written for one who identifies as a "sex and 'love' addict", to write a "relationship inventory". This inventory's purpose is to help one identify specific actions in order to discern patterns of behavior with the goal of unearthing motives (or seeing what one "gets" from people s/he has "used"...seeing what the "pay-off" is). Then, one should be able to see how selfish, dishonest, and afraid one has been and acknowledge how one has hurt others with his/her self-seeking motives and actions/patterns. This awareness, along with a surrender to a "power greater than oneself" and a willingness to "let" the behaviors and their propelling motives "go", is supposed to get one to make restitution/amends for harm done and aid other "suffering" "sex and 'love' addicts" which will, inherently, cause one to cease acting out in the patterns of behavior that created the events that made him/her go "Ugh" in the first place. And the inventory's purpose is fulfilled. Boom. Done.

When I found out I should write about all my relationships in order to "recover", I was pretty excited. I love writing! And a former writing professor of mine is writing a blog about his experience with cancer and its treatment (he also writes about bicycling across the U.S.). He also blogs about the writing process itself. It's very inspiring. So, I decided to turn my inventory into a blog so that I could use it both as my motivation to "change" as well as, perhaps one day, material for an actual memoir that I'll publish and have people maybe even read someday!

But...my very influential professor has helped me to see that how one writes is just as important as what one is writing about (along with the books I read in his autobiography-themed lit class in college). His writing appears to be in balance between its content and its characters of representation. It's not just a bunch of emotional rambling that pays no mind to the words being used...nor is it composed of meticulously placed words on a screen without any "real" content behind them.

In contrast, my metronomablog keeps ticking between the two. Here are a few insights I had gleaned about myself last night, before I started to care about how I was writing. I'm not going to do any editing, so you can see a true example of what my content is really like when I pay no mind to characters (as opposed to the above writing, which I've spent seven full hours editing!):



1. I get "high" from a man's attention. My heart beats fast. My body gets hot. My breathing is labored. It's a surge of adrenaline. I like it.

2. I get bored after the "high" is gone. I'm not actually interested in the hard "relationship" stuff. I tried that all ready, and it didn't work. Plus, I start to miss myself when I spend too much time with a guy. I never really got to find myself in the first place, I don't think. So I run to extremes and break it off instead of just try to slow things down.

3. I don't actually like the sex with the men all that much. Sex is just the thing I put up with after I get my "attention high". I do my best to pretend I enjoy it, so he still likes me and I can get "high" again the next time I see him, but then I don't get "high" again, or sometimes I do a couple more times, but soon enough, it goes away - and when that happens, so do I.

4. I still love the guy I ended up with after I left my husband over two years ago. I actually do enjoy sex with him, and, I still get "high" when I see him (or maybe it's not a "high" and is "real love"...who knows?). But it's hard as hell for me to accept him: he lives with his mom and stepdad and doesn't have a job and is about to have his car repossessed and his phone turned off and is more full of self-pity and devoid of motivation than anyone I know.

5. I want a guy to take care of me financially. But, when I find ones who are willing and able to do so, I don't want to be with them, after all. I fucked up by not getting my degree or starting a full-time career; I was being taken care of by my husband who received monthly money from his Indian tribe. Now I have to put my big girl pants on and go to night school and get a full-time job so I don't need a man to build a house on my grandparents' 20 acres (that's what James, the last guy, wanted to do, after knowing me for a week). No thanks, dude -- I can build my own damn house.

6. I'm so goddamn focused on the past and future that I don't actually do anything now to change my life situation. "Someday this will happen, and I'll be happy." "I can't believe all the shit I've done; I'm so disappointed in myself." You know what? Fuck that. I'll just be happy right now. 

Okay, this blog is taking a weird turn. But let's roll with it. Who fucking cares about the men I've been involved with over the past couple years? I don't even care any more. All I care about is what I'm doing right now. And right now I'm sitting merrily at my laptop, typing words - it's something I very much enjoy doing. But it's not making me any money, at the moment, which makes me revert back to insight number 5. Actually, I happen to be on a two-week unpaid forced vacation from my 20-hour-a-week 10-dollar-an-hour job.

So....it's time to get back into reading Mary Karr -- I need to finish her memoir, damnit...but every time I read it, I read like two pages and can't even keep going because I get all inspired and my fingers get itchy...which is cool, I guess. But it doesn't help me write any better if I don't keep reading actually good writing.

And as far as writing for change goes, well, guess what -- writing about the men I've been with over the past two years still hasn't stopped me from being with men. After the Propane Truck Driver, whom I considered to be my "rock bottom", there was the Satellite Communications Engineer, and now...well, you know that guy I talked about in insight number 4? The guy I wrote about me cheating on and leaving, over, and over, and over? Yep - the Pizza Delivery Boyfriend and I are back together, again.

But it's all good. At least I still have writing for the sake for writing. :)

Ugh.

One More Letter from the Pizza Delivery Boyfriend: "The Dumpy Sad Ex-Boyfriend"

I'm going to write a post tonight or tomorrow about my ex-boyfriend, "Evan", who has been sending me sad emails. As a preview: he was hired as a delivery driver at Pizza Hut where I worked in 2011 as an assistant manager. Same age as me (at the time, 27-28). I left my husband of ten years (together ten years, but married at 7) to be with him in October. Told him I loved him two weeks later; he told me not to use those words. I broke up with him. He wanted me back. I cheated on him. He wanted me back. I broke up with him. He wanted me back. I cheated on him. He wanted me back. Ad infinitum, until December 2012 - I broke up with him and it didn't matter that he wanted me back. I didn't go back to him until July 2013 (in December I wanted to be alone and recover, but kept getting into relationships; finally I wanted him back because he was "better" than all the other guys I'd been with - I loved him more, and he was a better lover, I mean). Broke up with him again in August 2013 to be with someone else, again. Broke up with that guy and went back to Evan, who had planned a 3-month trip to Canada with his best friend/novelist John (Evan's an artist - he was gonna paint) while we were broken up the last time. I wanted him to stay; he wanted to go. He left. I realized it was for the best and I didn't want him any more and decided to be with someone else. That's all a bunch of crap but it catches you up.

That guy (#27: The Propane Truck Driver) had sex with me and told me he had herpes. I realized I didn't want to be with any one any more because I didn't like who/what I'd become, plus, I probably had herpes, for all I knew (have been tested lots since; don't have it). But I saw it as a gift from God (choirs of angels singing). Entered sex/love addiction recovery very seriously on October 16, 2013. Relapsed November 21 after the woman who brought me into recovery (Margaret) killed herself and a guy at a concert who'd scored a film he'd created about a guy committing suicide asked me for my number when I went up to talk to him about it. He asked me out on a date and we had sex even though I told him I didn't want to have sex until marriage after what I'd been through the last two years and that I might have herpes. I kept seeing him through December 9 even though I knew I needed to get back to recovery and being alone (me = selfish; he had a lot to offer).

Now it's December 11. I'm on Day 2 again of recovery (I had made it all the way to Day 42 the first time) after adding another name to the list (I'm sorry, "James"; I really am), and I'm going for no less than 90 this time. Ideally, I'd actually rather not date or get into a relationship until either my divorce is final (I filed two years ago now - waiting on him, though), or until I reconcile with my husband (not sure which will be the case - not even sure which one I want). (James didn't like the fact that I wasn't divorced, and it hit me - duh).

So right now, I'm just rooting for me - I get to recover now. Grow up. When most women are "bachelorettes" and "coming of age" between 18-24, I was with my husband. I never got that period of being alone and coming into my own Being. So now I am, at 30.

I'm also continuing on with my relationship inventory, which I'm posting here on this blog. It's part of my healing process. And I plan on using some of it, eventually, for a memoir that I'd like to publish in 2 to 5 years (probably closer to 5, so I can make it really, really good). For now, it's scattered, not continuous/congruous/cohesive/coherent (in many places). Leaving things out. Just gathering information, facts, thoughts, feelings. Focusing on relationships. Need to read more memoirs for examples (like Mary Karr's - I had stopped reading when Margaret died....time to get back on the horse).

I have posted a few of these emails from Evan as I prepare to write about him (he's #1: The Pizza Delivery Boyfriend). (I don't mean to dehumanize them with nick-names. Rather, one of the main points of this inventory is to see where I've hurt people. But their names - like Evan, James, Bruce, Ronnie - those are all made up any way, so the descriptors actually make it easier for me to remember who they were. Sad, I know.) So here's his latest email; he keeps reminding me how much I hurt him, and it's good, in a way (although after this one, I plan to block them, since I'm powerless not to respond and I keep making myself late for work, since he writes after 2:00 am I get them in the morning).

I had asked Evan to stop trying to suck me into his vortex - I'd heard that phrase somewhere and wanted to use it - so that's why he begins this way:

Sllllluuuuuurrrrrrrp!  I'm trying hard to be an un-vortex.  Part of me wants you to be happy, part of me wants to have you, and still another part wants you to feel the pain that I feel because you've shown what my love is worth.. and its embarrassing to have to realize it isn't much.  I wish I was a more lovable person and that I inspired loyalty, but I don't think I'm that kind of person and knowing thyself is part of transcendence.  I always wanted to have my own family to look after since I was young.  I thought loyalty and honesty were the things a family man had to have and I guess I just see that as silly now looking at ours and other past relationships.  I don't know who else to express these things too.  If they bring you down a little... good.  Filling your life with nothing but positive people and places is a fools errand.. not being affected by the negative I think is the secret. 

Anyhow I'm not always negative.  I don't think others would put up with me as long as they have if that were true.  I think because you've now lapped me in terms of dating that it puts me in a different class... Like I can't keep up.  I'm not good enough for you.  I know you say its the spiritual churchiness I lack and the income, but if I was a quiet churchgoer with a pad I still think you would think yourself in a different class because of how many men you've had at your fingertips over the past few years with no 500 pound gorilla in the room to scare them off.  We skinny boys can seduce a whole lot of women but its the strong scary ones that keep them more often than not.  I really think that is what rolls across your mind when you roll your eyes at my sad messages.  I'll stop bumming you out soon enough.  I don't keep too many friends, dove, and I keep the ones I have for a long time.  So when you just move on past me because I take off (for a damn good reason) I'm still wanting to talk about my problems with you... only YOU is the problem.

So anyway... I jut smoked a shit ton of weed and laughed with a couple Canucks for the past 5 hours... So I'm not getting great sex with someone utterly new and fascinating who is fascinated with me while working a dream job and hanging out with a cool kid... I still know how to have a good time.  If your dumpy sad ex-boyfriend sends you the occasional depressing email what's it to you.  Just don't respond or be a total asshole until I run off like in "White Fang" with Ethan Hawk and that wolf-dog.

Mary Karr, pt. 2

Every time I read more of Mary Karr's The Liar's Club I'm inspired to write (although it doesn't take much...any time I'm not sleeping or writing, I want to be writing). I was thinking to myself while reading -- it was one of those No-shit moments -- Oh, so that's how you end up with a 300-page memoir... . Mary covers one year in 174 pages; then another year, sometime later, up through page 271; and then, finally, another year, way later, to 320. And there ya go. 3 years, over 300 pages. The Devil is in the Details.

To wit: Say I happen to be walking along with something (or other things) "happening" in my life macroscopically -- but there's a pile of shit on the sidewalk that stops me. Enter microcosm. I bend down to get closer. I take my time here. I describe how the shit smells, and how I feel when I smell it. I speak of what the shit reminds me from my past, and revel with some new understanding and perspective on that old shit. I expound, using an extended metaphor of something comparable that reveals what this pile of shit "means" on a deeper level. I describe what color it is, the consistency, the little pieces in it (like grass, fur, spinach - yes, it could be human), and what those things remind me of, and what they mean. I think of the shit I'm going to take later (and when I do take that shit, I think of this shit and how it changed my life). And before I know it, I have a whole page or two (or even three) just on this pile of shit on the ground, really just a tiny blip in a moment of an experience in the day of a life.

That's how I felt while reading The Liar's Club earlier, waiting at Great Clips to get my hair cut (so a "No-shit" moment became a "shit" moment, lol) (and see, I could go off on why I was getting my hair cut - shitty last hair cut - and what my hair has been like since I got that last hair cut - shitty - and I could go on to tell you what my hair's like now - less shitty; borderline fabulous). (But back to Liar's Club...I've been told I have a parenthesis problem.) The first "day" of the memoir lasts pages and pages and pages. I've been trying to read it for two days now, and that "first day" still isn't over (granted, my attention to reading gets diverted when something triggers my itchy writing fingers). What I get from it, as afore-mentioned and afore-exemplified, are these: Details. Details. Details.

It just went to show me, I don't have to write my whole story from childhood to now in one blog post (to put it hyperbolically) (and that's why I'm enjoying focusing on relationships, because it puts my life into little shoeboxes with people's names on them). I do need to pay attention to every word, every sentence, every paragraph, every page, and make sure I'm not trying to fit any square pegs into a round "whole" (and see, I also have a problem with little mini metaphors running all over the place...like I'm a cat-herder...but that's a simile...). When I do write the "real" memoir after this 25-man blog project, it doesn't have to tell my "whole" life story, either. Hell, Mary wrote two sequels to The Liar's Club...with probably still more to be revealed. (So I could write my whole life story with my first memoir, but then what? I suck at creative fiction.)

Okay, one more cat, to sum up:

Each post is a grain of salt on the tip of an iceberg floating in the Ocean of Memoir.

Mary Karr

Day 28 of no men. I'm sitting here at a local Laundromat reading Mary Karr's The Liar's Club, recommended to me by a former writing professor of mine who's blog I'm following to see whether or not he's going to survive this bout of cancer. (We all know he will, again...but I'm on pins and needles, damnit.) His blog inspired me to start one. I'd all ready been instructed by the guy who wrote a popular sex and love addiction recovery book to make an "inventory" describing every relationship I've ever been in so I could see how the hell I made such a mess of my life. Now that I'm reading about a guy going through what sounds like living hell in a fight just to stay alive, the "hell" I thought I'd been living in doesn't seem so bad. Not that I'd want to go back there -- actually, the whole point of writing, for me, is so that I don't keep fucking men I don't even know and figure out why the hell I've been doing that for the past two years in the first place.

Of course, it was suggested I write about all my relationships: friends, family, co-workers, etc. It's a monumental task, so I'm just doing pieces at a time and letting myself write freely whatever comes to mind (and then edit like a maniac when it goes from my paper notebook to this notebook).

In Mary's "Introduction" she describes the power of narrative as cathartic and healing -- but even more than that, for me, it changes my very life in the present, every day. I'm not sucking some guy's dick in a church parking lot right now. (I couldn't have said that two months ago.) This weekend I read to my four year-old son the dinosaur book I bought him for his birthday in August, for the first time. (It's mid-November.) I haven't written much about my mom yet -- that post is drafted and will probably get published after maybe a good 'nother eight hours of editing -- but I when I was pushing my son on the swings this weekend, and my arms were getting tired, I realized that I actually have no memories of my mom ever taking me to a park. So I kept pushing him. Later, I called her, just to tell her that I love her.

I freak out every time I post because somehow I expect to tell the whole story, right then and there. I have to get over that. I guess I just want these secrets to stop making me so sick. I want to throw 'em up and run like hell.

"Run like hell!" That was my best friend Shawna's motto when I was 12. She was 15. She and I did all kinds of crazy things. Once we broke into a vacant apartment and peed on the kitchen floor, just for the hell of it. I thought of her while reading The Liar's Club's page XIV about a fan of Mary's who, as a girl, "got adept (as [Mary] had) at worming her way into other people's houses." I don't think that's what she meant, but still.

This is how you recover in a 12-step program: you go to meetings where people tell you what they were like, what happened, and what they're like now. If you want what they have (sobriety, happiness, freedom) and are willing to go to any length to get it -- then you buckle up for the ride of your life, hold on tight, and don't let go.

Step 5 is, "We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs." Then we let it all go, and carry our message of experience, strength and hope with others so that they may recover also.

The real reason I needed to sit and read and write right here and now at the Laundromat is because there's still a part of me that wants to go to that church where that guy will be tonight (#21: The Black Jack Dealer). But there's a better part of me that wants that part of me to die.

St. Francis of Assisi said it best: "It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life."

Amen.

"Talk about it, the old wisdom says, and you get better. From narratives about childhood, [we manufacture] a self, neither cut off from [our] past nor mired in it" (Karr, XIV).

So -- let's face the music, and dance.