Is it easy to write a memoir about abuse?
Cathartic maybe. Healing, insightful, yes. But easy? Never - And sometimes it takes you down unexpected roads...
It has been a difficult time. I have been writing ...well, I WAS writing the next pieces about my childhood, working to move the book forward. But I got sidetracked by Mom.
The festering splinter
I had done a side piece about Mom..her death, her life…her, as part of the prologue. A matching bookend to the prologue entry about my father’s death. Yet every time I tried to edit it I ended up rewriting it instead. First from one angle, then another, struggling to capture that "something" inside me that needed to speak. That “something” that was driving me to write about her, and it was unrelenting. While I felt like I got closer to “it” with each round of writing, still, I was missing the essence.
Whatever it was I was trying to excavate, it was buried deep in my soul. The effort felt like when you have to plunge into your flesh with a needle to remove a deeply embedded festering splinter only to have it keep slipping out of your grasp and sink deeper. I felt like I was failing because that “Mom piece” was taking too long, and I needed to get back on track and return to that piece from my childhood. I was determined to stick to the outline.
This continued until late yesterday afternoon when, in a flash of insight…then despair, I realized I WASN’T off-track at all…and that there was actually something much bigger emerging in all of this. In fact, I suddenly understood that the “Mom” piece wasn’t the “sidetrack” but THE track. I kept getting pulled back to her...her death…her life because there were so many questions that needed answers. Questions like why did it matter so much to me that we took care of her to the end...why was I so proud of how she navigated her death process? Why did I care so much after she had abandoned me for a lifetime?
Parallel lives
In talking with my husband yesterday he and I hit the core - her story is mine. I almost ended up like her. My father chose us both…and damned us both. The only difference is I got out, and if I hadn't, what she had in life would have been my future.
My horror in childhood aside from what Dad did to me, was seeing what he did to her. And then telling me I most reminded him of her. My horror-driven mantra for life was "Don't grow up to be my Mother.” And I had little respect for what I perceived as her weakness all those years. Yet that is too simplistic...and in reworking this so many times, I realized that there was something in all of that that was so much bigger than I realized.
I sat there at the table staring at the reams of drafts and notes I had and felt so overwhelmed and full of despair, unsure if I'd ever be able to capture it. Every bit of me wanted to give up. But, in my life, in this memoir project, there is no quitting. There is only: “Start over and try again. Because it matters.”
That "something"
I remembered that sentence a memoir author wrote that said - memoir is not about you. It's about something, and you are the illustration. That something in my life is really about the intergenerational family system that destroys not just one person, but many, and poisons generations unless its grip is broken. That system, how it operated in my house, how it continues to operate in so many lives…that is the something at the core of why all this could happen.
The core question
And all of those emotions swirling around in me also dumped out a question onto the paper in front of me that needs an answer from me:
My father died never acknowledging his guilt, his sins, never apologizing. He was a bastard to the end.
My mother died, never acknowledging her failure to protect me, never willing to speak to me about the past no matter how I tried to connect. But she was kind in those last hours and thanked us for our care.
For both, there was no apology. No acknowledgement. No resolution. No answers. No understanding. Those I have to find for myself.
Yet, why is it that even with no resolution or answers from my Mother, I judge my mother differently now, than him?
Why can I forgive her, but never him?
Do I go on?
Staring at that sentence and all my versions of Mom’s death piece, I felt so sooooo tired…so flooded with the despair of realizing that there is so much more work that my story will require…if I am to see it through to the correct and honorable end.
I got up this morning — struggling to get out of bed because I sooo wanted to walk away from all of this. And if you add in all the other bullshit going on in the world it just felt like too much. All I could think of was: Where can I run to?
Yet, the more my heart cries out in pain and all of me recoils from the work…the closer I am to the core of the issue.
So the answer is - you don't run. And given the gnawing realization that the things I need to learn so I can heal, and the things I need to share in case anyone else needs this memoir, are buried in this story — I know there is no quitting. I want that healing.
So is it easy writing this memoir? No.
Does it take you down unexpected paths? For sure.
Is it necessary? Yes.
And will I see it through to the end? Absolutely. No matter how long it takes.
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