On trauma and why I don't have an established "writing practice"

Lately I have been working up many of my poems for publication. I joined a Facebook group or two specifically for poets in the publication process. These ladies are my idols, they're dedicated, fun people who work hard at getting their art out there.

For me, for a long time, writing was processing escapism. As a child I was abused by neighbors for a long time. I never told anyone, until I was much older, and I was saved when my family moved across the state. This left me a bit less than whole. No... that's not quite right. Instead of less than whole, I was too whole. I was too full of things that a young girl shouldn't be full of - fear, self-loathing, hatred. I missed a childhood but the negative things that got crammed in where the hole of my childhood was were seething and they grew too fast for my young mind. And I took to writing. Writing was my solace, writing was a way in which I could write myself bigger, able to handle all the things that were in me. I could write myself smaller, or invisible, or not in the picture at all and envision a world without people, with only things. I could write anything, and in writing, I discovered immortality.

Then I grew. And I went to college. Originally I wanted to become a genetic engineer. I was extremely excited about ideas I had regarding the capabilities of retroviruses to be released as anti-retroviruses. I had plans. And I chickened out. I was too afraid to be too far from my parents, so I didn't cash in those scholarships to MIT and Yale. I thought of going for music, but I chickened out. I was too afraid to be too far from all the things I'd always known, so I didn't cash in the scholarship to the Lawrence Conservatory of Music. I had a full scholarship to any state school in Wisconsin or Minnesota as well, and I decided to go that route.

While there, I studied drama and poetry. I had in my mind that it didn't matter what I studied in college - I wouldn't be getting a job in what I got a degree in anyway, so why not do something I loved? And I did love it. Poets were something wild, something that didn't seem afraid. The poetry teacher I identified with was crazy, and just lived his life the way he wanted. I admired that somehow, and emulated it. But writing was about lifestyle and escaping, still.

I quit school, again, you will recall that I said this is bullshit. I took a job in Minneapolis, and my best friend and I moved. It was great. I do not lament any of these life experiences, nor would I have done them differently. Everything I do has led to who I am and I love myself, I love my children, my job and my life. And my friends. Renee and I, with our friends Trish and Katie, had a good time in Minneapolis. And I stopped writing.

I quit that job and moved to Washington DC to be with my ex-husband and to take a job which changed my life. Both things did. I got married, and in my job, I discovered I could bring creativity to the workplace and I loved that job. I had a mentor, Maxine, who I adored and looked up to. She'd been in the Peace Corps. She had children already, and a career, and a sense of humor, and an eye for what could be in the long run. This was critical for me at that time, and would come back to me later, but for the moment, I simply enjoyed my work and meeting people and hosting exciting meetings and having a good life.

Then I had Anna and I realized I couldn't bear to leave her at home. I quit my job to be a stay at home mother, and this left me alone most of the time. Post partum depression hit me, hard, and I started reliving my childhood. I went back to school to finish my bachelors in creative writing, so I could have adult company in the evenings and better job prospects after my kids grew a little. And I started writing again. This time, I wrote my lonely heart companions. I wrote poems that expressed all the things I wasn't ready to face. Julia came, and she came early, and the hormonal whirlwind of post partum depression just got worse and worse. I wrote daily, I wrote six, seven, ten poems a day. I decided to start my MFA in poetry because I loved it so fiercely, so much of me went into writing.

And then a medication that my neruologist tried for migraines changed my life forever, when it caused a psychotic break and I wound up in a hospital for ten days, detoxing and learning that all my energetic life with its high happy and its post partum abyss was actually bipolar disorder. I continued my MFA for a year, but I stopped writing. I was afraid. When I looked at my demons, at my past, and I wrote, I was afraid I would lose control. I took medication and I altered my life to pay careful attention to what I ate, when I slept, making sure I minimized my stress. I nurtured my body and my mind by hugging them and giving them permission to heal - and I did heal. And I became happy for the first time, really, since I was 9. Really, truly at peace, through therapy and time and writing and process and escapsim and I felt I have to be done with escapism. I have to LIVE now.

But the bipolar had taken its toll on my marriage and it dissolved, for the better. My ex-husband is a great dad, and when I grew up, I was not compatible with him. We had far too different world views, and this story is complex and not something for telling now, but we separated and moved on and remarried and life was continuing to be more and more awesome but my writing nagged at me. It was like an itch that I was refusing to acknowledge. But in some small way, I blamed my writing for my instability earlier. I thought that allowing myself to delve into the abyss in my mind was weakening me, and it was making me crazy. I talked to my husband about it. I talked to poet friends.

I have a confession. In the time since I treated my bipolar, I stopped reading new books. The only books I would read were books I HAD read, and many times. And I read the same books over, and over. Now, I have read thousands of books so this isn't quite as crazy as it sounds, but I was afraid of reading too.

I started with reading. I read new things. Journals, blogs, books - poems. And I started experimenting with liturgical voice and writing poems about religion and Judaism. I started writing poems about parenting. I wrote no poems about childhood trauma, because I didn't feel the need to. I destroyed the old poems which hurt and had no element of art in them. I healed my relationship with writing.

But it took time. And now, it's hard for me to get into good writing habits. Sometimes I write at night, or in the morning. I write outside on the deck, I write at the table, I write at work, I write in the car. I write at odd hours. I keep my sleep schedule, don't worry, and I'm no longer medicated because I've worked so hard to regulate myself, and I do regulate myself beautifully, but I have no real writing process. Now I write simply because words love me and I love them and we bring each other great happiness. I write in the way I love my husband, my children, my family - without abandon and freely and with no expectations. It's freeing, and I'm still sometimes scared. If I write too many things in too short a time I check myself - am I just escaping?

Sometimes I wonder if that fear will always be there.

Sometimes I'm sure it will not be.