Topic: Freeflow
Sunday 9:45pm 26Nov06
I didn't mention all the books that I bought at the World's Biggest. I also bought two books by bell hooks. I bought "Wounds of Passion - a writing life" and "Remembered Rapture - the writer at work."
Remembered Rapture is what I'm reading. It brings me back to my beginning. When I first started to write. The lack of understanding of why I'd want to write. Drawing was more palatable, made most sense. Why would you write? What purpose does it serve? Asked in a house full of readers. Because from me it could never amount to anything.
No one understood my need to be heard. I couldn't express out loud how the family changes affected me. These two new step sisters who switched me from the youngest child to the middle child and the oldest girl overnight. These two new step sisters that I had to keep happy to avoid punishment. This step father that I deeply suspected couldn't stand me. He wanted the thrill of the black woman and what possessing her meant but the black daughter?
I was burdened by constantly feeling not good enough. The competitive comparisons that were bandied about as proof that I was less.
Debbie saying to my mother about we three Pisces, "Shelley's not a sensitive Pisces like us." Because I didn't cry about it in front of her. I didn't fight and argue to get my point across. I remained silent and watchful. No one had noticed that I had shut down. I was drowning in the realization that I had no power. I had to bide my time and grow up. When I was an adult I'd have the power to leave.
In the meantime I wrote childish love poems that hid my hurt and despair. Love poems were the coded writings for what I was feeling, the slow anger rising in me, the words rehearsed in my head. For that one day that I blurted out what I thought about them. Who knew I was to deal with my step father first? Hmm and never have contact with that one step sister for my whole adult life (other than at my mother's funeral.)
I never believed I'd have the guts to stand feet planted, eye contact in line, mouth without a stutter and hear my voice say that they hadn't crushed me whole...
I feel I need to dig out that false belief that told me I had no right to think I'd be any good , I had no right to think that writing could be my life option. I have so much pain surrounding my need to write and somewhere deep within me I'm still fighting the familial demons that promised me that I'd amount to nothing.
This is why I needed to buy those books.
EY
